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THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS 
AT  WORK 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


THE 

LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS 
AT  WORK 


BY 

ARTHUR  SWEETSER 

Of  the  American  Peace  Commission  and  the  Provisional 
Secretariat  of  the  League  of  Nations 


gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1920 

A.II  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1920. 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1910. 


I 


PREFACE 

I  feel  it  is  owed  to  those  who  chance  to  read  this 
little  book  to  preface  it  with  a  few  personal  words. 
For  in  a  subject  so  controversial  as  the  League  of 
Nations  the  public  has  the  right  to  know  with 
what  purpose  and  with  what  authority  a  writer 
presumes  to  ask  its  attention. 

It  so  happens  that  I  have  had  access  to  facts 
which  I  believe  throw  an  entirely  different  inter- 
pretation upon  the  League  than  that  almost  uni- 
versally held,  as  I  saw  the  League  at  birth  in  Paris 
when  a  member  of  the  American  Peace  Commis- 
sion; saw  it  under  development  in  London  as  a 
member  of  the  Provisional  Secretariat;  and  finally 
saw  it  in  its  first  world  conference  in  Washington 
as  a  member  of  the  staff  of  the  International 
Labor  Conference. 

The  genesis  of  this  little  book  lay  in  a  series  of 
articles  written  for  the  New  York  Evening  Post 
at  that  very  extraordinary  moment  when  nine 
Americans  out  of  every  ten  took  it  for  granted 


vi  Preface 

that  because  the  United  States  had  failed  to  ratify 
the  Treaty  the  League  did  not  exist.  To  those 
who  knew  the  facts  it  appeared  not  only  unwise 
but  perhaps  positively  dangerous  for  a  democracy 
so  intelligent  and  so  vitally  concerned  with  world 
affairs  as  the  United  States  to  overlook  entirely  a 
federation  of  almost  all  the  other  nations  of  the 
world. 

And  I  am  convinced  that  almost  no  one,  either 
friend  or  foe,  understands  what  the  League  ac- 
tually is.  Its  friends  are  tempted  to  exaggerate 
'it  as  a  panacea  for  all  world  ills;  its  enemies  to 
misrepresent  it  as  a  superstate.  It  is  in  fact 
neither,  but  on  the  contrary  a  new  link  in  the  chain 
of  human  relationships  made  imperatively  neces- 
sary by  the  annihilation  of  distance  as  a  barrier 
between  states. 

It  has  been  a  constant  effort  all  through  the 
preparation  of  these  pages  to  present  only  plain, 
hard,  concrete  facts,  in  the  conviction  that  the 
average  busy  reader  is  satiated  with  the  flood  of 
generalities  about  the  League  and  the  brother- 
hood of  man.  Opposed  to  this  is  a  very  earnest 
and  almost  universal  desire  to  know  the  true  facts 
as  they  exist  today. 


Preface  vii 

This  little  book  comes  from  a  friend  of  and  a 
believer  in  the  League.  I  cannot  be  blind,  there- 
fore, to  the  fact  that  it  may  be  partial.  I  sin- 
cerely hope  not,  for  I  have  struggled  constantly 
against  that  danger.  If  I  have  failed,  I  crave 
indulgence  on  the  ground  of  over-zealousness 
stimulated  first  by  warmth  of  feeling  because  a 
subject  so  vital  to  America  is  so  little  understood 
and  so  grossly  misrepresented,  and  second  because 
there  cannot  be  obliterated  from  the  background 
of  my  mind  even  the  slight  glimpses  of  war  as  I 
happened  to  see  it  during  Von  Kluck's  dash  on 
Paris  in  those  so  quickly  forgotten  days  of  1914. 

ARTHUR  SWEETSER. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  WAR i 

THE  LEAGUE  SKELETON 16 

THE  ASSEMBLY  AND  THE  COUNCIL      ....  29 

THE  LEAGUE  IN  1914 49 

THE  PERMANENT  COURT 63 

THE  SECRETARIAT 79 

DISARMAMENT 92 

MINORITIES 107 

MANDATES 122 

FREEDOM   OF  TRANSIT 135 

THE  INTERNATIONAL  LABOR  ORGANIZATION  .      .  149 

THE  INTERNATIONAL  HEALTH  ORGANIZATION     .  162 

ECONOMIC  COOPERATION 175 

OPEN  DIPLOMACY 187 

THE  LEAGUE  AS  MEDIATOR 204 


THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS 
AT  WORK 

' 

THE  WAR 

ON  January  10,  1920,  the  League  of  Nations 
descended  from  the  realm  of  fancy  and  became 
a  fact. 

Its  worst  enemies  could  hardly  have  wished  for 
a  more  inauspicious  moment.  The  nations  were 
staggering  with  debt;  the  great  wound  of  the 
World  War  remained  still  unhealed;  Russia's 
vast  masses  stood  off  to  one  side,  almost  out- 
lawed; and  the  United  States,  whose  phenomenal 
part  in  the  war  had  given  such  hopes  for  the  re- 
construction period,  had  withdrawn  its  support. 
Almost  any  kind  of  upheaval  might  have  been  ex- 
pected, for  the  forces  of  destruction  seemed  com- 
pletely to  have  overcome  the  forces  of  construc- 
tion. 

The  League  came  into  being  quietly,  unostenta- 


2  The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

tiously,  almost  automatically,  overshadowed  dur- 
ing its  early  months  by  a  world  seething  in  crisis. 
Men  were  so  desperate  with  immediate  threats  of 
disaster  that  they  did  not  have  time  to  note  the 
foundations  which  were  being  prepared  near  by, 
to  realize  indeed  that  what  seemed  to  be  but  a 
modest  breaking  of  the  ground  would  in  time 
prove  of  far  more  import  than  the  preoccupations 
of  the  immediate  moment. 

Potentially  the  League  became  at  once  the 
greatest  fact  in  international  relations.  For  the 
first  time  the  great  majority  of  the  family  of  na- 
tions was  welded  together  in  an  organization  very 
strict  in  its  provisions  for  avoiding  war  but  very 
simple  and  flexible  in  its  actual  details  of  organi- 
zation. By  its  mere  existence  it  launched  the  na- 
tions upon  an  era  of  regular,  automatic  conference 
and  cooperation  as  against  the  previous  era  of 
hostile,  disjointed  competition. 

On  that  day  of  January  10,  1920,  the  ratifica- 
tions of  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  were  exchanged 
at  Paris;  the  Treaty  became  effective,  and  the 
League  of  Nations  became  part  of  the  public  law 
of  the  world.  Automatically  thirteen  of  the  Al- 


The  War  3 

lied  and  Associated  Powers  became  members,  in- 
cluding four  of  the  Big  Five,  Great  Britain, 
France,  Italy  and  Japan,  whose  interests  reach 
out  into  every  continent  on  the  globe,  and  Poland, 
Czecho-Slovakia,  Belgium,  Brazil,  Peru,  Bolivia, 
Guatemala,  Uruguay  and  Siam. 

Far  more  heartening  however  than  this  continu- 
ation of  a  union  created  in  the  stress  of  war  was 
the  eagerness  displayed  by  the  nations  which  had 
remained  neutral  during  the  four  and  a  half  years 
of  hostilities,  to  contribute  their  aid  to  the  forma- 
tion of  a  true  world  organization.  Though  the 
Covenant  allowed  them  two  months  in  which  to 
join  as  original  members,  all  thirteen  formally 
assumed  their  places  beside  the  other  Powers  ap- 
preciably before  that  period  had  elapsed.  The 
list  contains  states  famous  for  their  independence 
and  very  powerful  in  their  moral  weight,  the  Ar- 
gentine, Chile,  Colombia,  Denmark,  the  Nether- 
lands, Norway,  Paraguay,  Persia,  Salvador, 
Spain,  Sweden,  Switzerland  and  Venezuela. 
,  Other  states  immediately  applied  for  admis- 
sion, Finland,  Iceland,  Georgia,  San  Marino,  Lux- 
embourg, and  the  Ukraine.  Thus  came  together 


4  The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

nearly  the  whole  civilized  world,  Europe,  South 
America,  Asia,  Africa  and  Canada  in  North 
America.  Almost  without  notice  was  created  the 
most  far-reaching  organization  ever  effected,  the 
nearest  approach  indeed  to  bringing  all  the  na- 
tions, races  and  continents  about  a  single  confer- 
ence table.  At  the  first  meeting  under  the 
League,  for  instance,  forty  sovereign  states  were 
represented. 

This  is  exactly  the  sort  of  thing  which  has  never 
before  existed.  The  nations  have  not  been  able 
to  get  together  for  quick,  cooperative  action,  but 
have  stood  far  off  from  each  other  in  proud  dis- 
trust. The  result  has  been  illuminated  in  the 
greatest  tragedy  of  the  human  race.  To  reduce 
it  to  its  simplest  terms,  the  World  War  would  not 
have  broken  out  in  1914,  according  to  Sir  Edward 
Grey,  if  the  mere  machinery  provided  in  the 
League  of  Nations  had  been  in  existence. 

Sir  Edward  Grey  knows.  More  than  any 
other  man  he  strove  to  prevent  the  catastrophe. 
More  than  any  other  man  he  had  his  finger  on 
the  pulse  of  the  world  in  those  humid,  desperate 
days  of  late  July  and  early  August  when  the  world 


The  War  5 

was  shooting  down  to  Armageddon,  blissfully  un- 
conscious of  its  fate.  Such  a  statement  from  him 
is  startling.  It  immediately  challenges  proof  or 
disproof. 

Most  emphatically  Sir  Edward  Grey  does  not 
mean  that  the  League  is  a  panacea  for  all  our  ills 
or  that  it  will  suddenly  throw  a  spirit  of  righteous- 
ness and  unselfishness  over  men's  minds  which  will 
make  so  sordid  a  thing  as  war  a  spiritual  impossi- 
bility. Human  nature  runs  too  deep  for  that. 
What  he  does  mean,  however,  is  that  the  war 
came  into  being  largely  by  default,  because  the 
forces  of  negotiation  and  peaceful  settlement 
marshalled  against  it  suddenly  collapsed  under  the 
unprecedented  pressure  and  allowed  all  the  rest  of 
the  world  to  cave  in  behind  them. 

Sometimes  we  take  a  course  of  action  not  be- 
cause it  is  the  course  which  by  sheer  desire  we 
should  select  to  take,  but  because  it  is  the  only 
course  open  to  us  to  take.  In  other  words,  we 
sometimes  get  ourselves  into  a  blind  alley,  where 
there  is  only  one  way  out  —  just  as  the  world  in 
1914  got  itself  into  a  blind  alley  where  all  doors 
were  closed  except  that  to  war.  What  Sir  Ed- 


6  The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

ward  Grey  means  is  that  the  League  of  Nations,  if 
it  had  existed,  would  have  opened  several  other 
doors  of  escape  out  of  the  Austro-Serbian  im- 
broglio. 

I  well  remember  how  in  those  same  August  days 
I  found  myself  swept  along  in  that  vast  Niagara 
of  men,  guns,  automobile  trucks,  soup  kitchens  and 
all  the  other  paraphernalia  of  war  which  surged 
over  Northern  France  in  the  greatest  concerted 
military  move  in  history  up  to  the  time  of  Amer- 
ica's crusade  to  Europe.  I  had  seen  the  French 
and  British  Armies  and  was  now  with  the  German. 
Borne  on  over  hills  and  dales,  watching  the  French 
peasants  and  the  German  invaders,  seeing  the  lit- 
tle human  relationships  that  could  not  but  crop  up 
even  against  the  background  of  flaming  villages 
and  mangled  bodies,  the  one  great,  never  resting 
wonder  which  churned  about  in  my  mind  was  why 
an  assassin's  bullet  in  a  far-off,  desolate  Balkan 
town  should  have  so  disrupted  all  these  peaceful 
lives,  have  torn  the  Germans  out  of  their  shops 
and  factories  and  schools,  have  thrown  them  pell- 
mell  across  a  friendly  state  in  an  orgy  of  blood, 
have  uprooted  the  sluggish  French  peasantry  and 


The  War  7 

left  these  helpless,  dumb-eyed  women  and  chil- 
dren cowering  under  the  scourge  of  the  conqueror. 

It  was  a  colossal  human  tragedy.  Not  a  frag- 
ment of  these  people  desired  it,  even  knew  it  was 
coming.  They  were  but  its  unseeing  victims, 
caught  up  in  all  its  horrors  by  forces  they  had 
not  learned  to  control.  Why,  why,  why?  kept 
ringing  in  my  mind.  I  realized  perfectly  well 
that  an  evil  philosophy  had  been  rampant  in  Ger- 
many; that  a  tiny  minority  of  misguided  men  had 
wormed  their  way  up  to  the  top  and  poisoned  the 
wells  of  German  super-policy,  but  even  these  facts 
did  not  give  me  the  answer  as  to  why  the  peoples 
of  these  countries,  the  intelligent,  big-hearted, 
earnest,  friendly  masses,  should  have  tolerated  a 
condition  from  which  war  was  the  only  issue. 

The  picture  of  those  fatal  days  of  negotia- 
tion returned.  I  could  see  great  masses  of  people 
which  we  call  nations,  dull,  inert,  unseeing,  with  a 
tiny  fever  spot  burning  in  several  of  them,  a  spot 
where  a  handful  of  jewelled,  perfumed  supermen 
were  planning  huge  offensives,  scheming  in  terms 
of  army  corps,  writing  off  ultimata,  gambling 
away  the  futures  of  their  peoples,  all  unknowingly 


8  The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

to  the  great  human  world  that  went  its  way  out- 
side. Then  came  the  picture  of  a  small  Balkan 
nation  set  upon  by  a  huge  neighbor,  surrendering, 
even  humiliating  itself;  then  a  larger  nation  rush- 
ing up  in  all  its  grandeur  to  the  rescue;  then  still 
another  charging  in  in  its  flaming  armor;  a  picture 
of  the  tiny  fever  spots  burning  still  whiter  as  they 
threw  the  lives  of  their  unseeing  millions  onto  the 
table;  then  a  series  of  blind,  frantic,  misunder- 
stood messages  flashing  back  and  forth  far  above 
the  heads  of  those  who  were  to  pay;  and  at  last 
the  inevitable  monster  explosion  which  immersed 
the  world  in  four  and  a  half  years  of  blood  and 
cost  the  lives  of  seven  millions  of  the  same  kind 
of  innocent  people  I  had  seen  on  both  sides  of  the 
lines  in  Northern  France. 

The  catastrophe  began  without  a  single  confer- 
ence. The  nations  were  plunged  into  war  by  a 
handful  of  telegrams  which  in  their  portentous  of- 
ficial phraseology  are  even  today  not  fully  un- 
derstood. One  false  step  led  to  another  until  the 
vicious  circle  was  complete.  No  meeting  ground 
was  available,  no  obligation  for  discussion  exist- 


The  War  9 

ent.  The  madmen  who  had  worked  for  war 
could  generate  it  without  a  pretence  of  discussion, 
without  the  simple  human  act  of  meeting  their 
opponents  face  to  face,  without  asking  yea  or  nay 
of  their  peoples. 

Sir  Edward  Grey  proposed  the  one  human 
course.  He  asked  that  the  statesmen  get  to- 
gether about  a  table;  that  they  talk  over  their  dif- 
ferences man  to  man;  that  they  try  to  settle 
them  by  agreement  and  not  by  hostility.  But  no 
one  heard  him.  And  therein  lies  the  whole  great 
crime.  Frantically,  even  as  the  flames  were 
mounting,  he  telegraphed  about  Europe  to  this 
end.  They  did  not  hear,  first  because  they  did 
not  want  to  hear,  and,  second,  because  they  had 
no  obligation  to  hear.  They  had  carte  blanche  to 
plunge  the  world  into  blood. 

For  the  world  had  failed  to  create  any  adequate 
machinery  to  settle  international  disputes  peace- 
ably. There  was  neither  judicial  court,  arbitral 
body  nor  obligation  to  establish  either  before  run- 
ning to  arms.  States  had  grown  and  grown  in 
power,  each  a  law  unto  itself,  each  in  all  its 


io        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

national  pride  scornful  of  the  others,  yet  all  cross- 
ing and  recrossing  each  other  until  an  almost 
hopeless  tangle  was  created. 

Many  men  had  seen  the  rocks  ahead.  Back  in 
1899  the  first  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague  had 
been  called  together  to  create  new  contacts  for 
this  new  relationship.  The  nations  approached 
each  other  fearfully,  self-consciously,  distrustfully, 
above  all,  haughtily.  National  pride  was  all  pow- 
erful. No  one  could  forget  he  was  the  chosen 
representative  of  a  sovereignty.  Under  all  these 
inhibitions  an  attempt  was  made  to  create  the 
machinery  which  might  have  prevented  just  such 
a  world  conflagration  as  some  of  the  more  far- 
seeing  statesmen  realized  awaited  mankind  on  the 
near  horizon. 

'  The  duty  of  sovereign  states  to  promote  in- 
ternational justice  by  all  wise  and  effective  means 
is  second  only  to  the  fundamental  necessity  of 
protecting  their  own  existence,"  said  John  Hay 
in  his  instructions  to  the  American  delegates. 
"  Next  in  importance  to  their  independence  is  the 
great  fact  of  their  interdependence.  Nothing 
can  secure  for  human  government  and  for  the  au- 


The  War  n 

thority  of  law  which  it  represents  so  deep  a  re- 
spect and  so  firm  a  loyalty  as  the  spectacle  of 
sovereign  and  independent  states,  whose  duty  it 
is  to  prescribe  the  rules  of  justice  and  impose  pen- 
alties on  the  lawless,  bowing  with  reverence  before 
the  august  supremacy  of  those  principles  of  right 
which  give  to  law  its  eternal  foundation." 

A  start  was  made  at  those  Hague  meetings. 
That  start  was  largely  due  to  American  insistence 
and  ingenuity  in  pressing  for  a  rule  of  law  and 
arbitration  in  international  relations.  A  skeleton 
court  was  established  and  a  procedure  drawn  up, 
all  except  for  the  vital  question  of  the  method 
of  selecting  the  permanent  judges.  National 
hauteur  here  broke  in,  for  the  small  nations  de- 
manded equality  of  representation  and  the  big 
nations  demanded  representation  proportionate  to 
power. 

The  Hague  Court  was  created,  but  only  as  a 
promise.  The  Second  Conference,  in  1907, 
stimulated  again  by  the  instructions  given  the 
American  delegates  by  Secretary  of  State  Elihu 
Root,  carried  it  on  a  little  further,  but  not  far 
enough.  It  remained  still  a  promise  expandable 


12        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

into  life  if  the  nations  saw  fit  to  use  it,  but  with- 
out any  real  vitality  of  its  own.  When  the  des- 
perate negotiations  just  before  the  war  were  tak- 
ing place  it  proved  far  too  undeveloped  for  the 
nations  to  turn  to  it,  even  if  there  had  been  any 
real  desire  to  do  so.  Sir  Edward  Grey  was  left 
without  recourse  and  the  opposing  statesmen 
without  obligation. 

The  war  thus  came  into  being  by  default.  For 
four  and  a  half  years  the  curtain  was  rung  down 
on  civilization.  But  men  were  thinking,  espe- 
cially in  the  baffled,  dismayed  United  States, 
which  had  led  the  field  in  urging  the  settlements 
of  disputes  peacefully  and  which  grasped  out  in 
vain  to  find  any  real  necessity  for  the  holocaust. 
Fourteen  months  before  we  entered  the  war  Pres- 
ident Wilson,  in  two  fervent  sentences  at  Des 
Moines,  gave  expression  to  this  deepest  of  Amer- 
ica's impulses.  Whether  or  not  he  was  right  in 
his  later  enunciations  of  policy,  he  certainly  spoke 
America's  heart  when  he  said: 

"  I  pray  God  that  if  this  contest  have  no  other 
result,  it  will  at  least  have  the  result  of  creating 
an  international  tribunal  and  producing  some  sort 


The  War  13 

of  joint  guarantee  of  peace  on  the  part  of  the 
nations  of  the  world." 

It  did.  The  lessons  of  the  war  ran  deep,  deep- 
est of  all  perhaps  the  lesson  of  humility.  The 
pride  and  irresponsibility  which  had  choked  all 
previous  attempts  at  united  action  were  thrown 
into  the  discard.  In  the  shambles  of  Northern 
France  the  nations  had  consented  to  unified  mili- 
tary command;  in  the  desperation  of  hunger,  of 
burned-out  resources,  of  diplomatic  disasters,  they 
had  consented  to  a  unified  direction  of  resources. 

So  when  they  came  to  Paris  they  came  chas- 
tened and  more  humble.  Out  of  their  past  they 
realized  they  could  cooperate  in  the  future;  out 
of  their  war  sufferings  they  realized  that  they 
must  unite  to  prevent  new  wars.  The  arrogant, 
irresponsible  pride  which  had  held  the  nations 
apart  at  The  Hague  and  prevented  the  develop- 
ment of  anything  but  the  paper  shell  of  inter- 
national cooperation  had  been  curbed.  Men's 
minds  were  ripe  for  great  advances;  were  recep- 
tive, indeed,  to  proposals  which  a  few  short  years 
before  only  the  most  farseeing  would  have  advo- 
cated. 


14         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

In  casting  the  lessons  of  the  war  into  a  charter 
for  the  future  the  little  selfish  foibles  of  the  past 
fell  helplessly  away.  The  question  of  interna- 
tional cooperation -as  against  international  license 
stood  answered  against  the  grim  spectre  of 
7,000,000  of  dead.  The  smaller  niceties  which 
before  had  appeared  as  mountains  were  crushed 
under  foot  to  make  an  end  to  the  system  of  dis- 
organization through  whose  yawning  cracks  the 
war  had  been  allowed  to  creep.  The  League  of 
Nations  Commissions,  representing  the  better 
personality  of  the  Peace  Conference,  built  up  a 
whole  great  new  machinery  and  set  in  place  the 
scaffolding  for  still  more. 

How  deplorable  it  is  that  it  has  become  almost 
a  mark  of  fashionableness  to  discredit  everything 
emanating  from  the  Peace  Conference.  If  only 
people  could  realize  the  hopes  and  idealisms  amid 
which  the  League  was  born !  True,  there  were 
remorseless  pulling  and  tugging  at  Paris  and  much 
playing  of  the  old  familiar  game  which  has  proved 
so  disastrous  throughout  history,  but  alongside  it 
was  another,  a  newer  and  a  better  feeling.  Men 
were  writing  visions,  not  of  some  dread  super- 


The  War  15 

state,  but  of  mutual  helpfulness  and  confidence; 
and  if  those  visions  were  blurred  in  many  places 
by  the  fears,  hatreds,  jealousies  and  greeds  of  the 
preceding  four  and  a  half  years  of  terror,  they 
remained  in  large  degree  pure  when  the  League 
of  Nations  itself  was  conceived. 


THE  LEAGUE  SKELETON 

THE  best  and  quickest  way  to  understand  just 
what  the  League  of  Nations  is,  how  it  is  organ- 
ized, how  it  functions,  and  what  its  actual  powers 
are  is  to  take  a  bird's-eye  view  of  its  various  lines 
of  activities.  Sometimes  we  can  understand  a 
new  subject  better  by  discussing  its  structure  than 
by  the  most  elaborate  analysis  of  its  principles. 

Strangely  enough,  what  might  be  called  the  per- 
sonality of  the  League  is  known  to  almost  no  one 
outside  the  League  itself.  This  is  all  the  more 
curious  because  there  has  been  the  fullest  pub- 
licity about  every  step  in  League  organization, 
even  to  the  extent  of  detailed  explanations  of  the 
various  projects  at  meetings  of  the  Council. 
Yet  here  again  the  pressure  of  immediate  emer- 
gencies in  world  politics  has  thrown  a  shadow 
across  the  broader  currents  in  the  relations  of 
states  and  left  visible  only  the  upper  surfaces. 

Yet  the  League  of  Nations  should  be  the  most 
fascinating  political  story  in  the  world  today.  It 

16 


The  League  Skeleton  17 

is  the  story  of  a  vision,  a  vision  made  practicable 
only  by  the  greatest  war  in  history,  a  vision  con- 
verted to  reality  amidst  difficulties,  misunderstand- 
ings, and  dangers  sufficient  to  dissipate  any  project 
not  supported  by  the  most  intense  faith  and  the 
most  dire  necessity.  It  opens  up  a  whole  new 
panorama  of  world  relations  and  of  human  activ- 
ities; shows  us  glimpses  of  a  world  different  from 
any  we  have  ever  known;  and  illuminates  a  series 
of  political  organizations  for  which  we  have  no 
precedent. 

The  League  has  been  frightfully  misinterpreted 
as  well  by  its  friends  as  by  its  enemies.     The  for- 
mer perhaps  have  sinned  as  much  in  their  ex- 
treme claims  of  what  it  can  do  as  have  the  latter 
in  their  glaring  misrepresentations  of  what  it  may 
do.     The  League  will  be  shown  to  be  neither  a 
panacea  for  all  world  ills,  nor  a  superstate  destruc- 
tive of  national  sovereignty.     It  stands  halfway 
between  the  two,  a  means  of  marshalling  what  is  ] 
good  in  the  world  in  the  belief  that  the  good  out-/ 
weighs  the  bad,  but  without  such  powers  as  will', 
destroy  the  independence  of  any  of  its  member 
states. 


1 8         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Americans  above  all  should  understand  this  new 
world  organization.  Our  huge  world  interests 
demand  it.  We  can  no  longer  play  ostrich,  as 
though  the  rest  of  the  world  did  not  exist.  Apart 
from  the  fact  that  we  turned  the  scales  in  the  most 
gigantic  war  in  history,  apart  from  our  moral  re- 
sponsibility as  the  virtual  creators  of  the  League, 
apart  from  everything  that  is  gone  and  past,  we 
will  measure  our  tax  bill  in  terms  of  world  arma- 
ments; we  will  have  peace  as  the  world  has  peace; 
we  will  have  prosperity  as  the  world  is  able  to 
take  our  ten  billion  dollars  of  foreign  trade;  we 
will  redeem  our  Liberty  Bonds  as  Europe  repays 
us  the  ten  billions  she  owes  us. 

We  do  not  today  understand  the  League. 
There  is  nothing  we  do  not  know  about  Article 
X,  about  the  duties,  responsibilities  and  dangers 
of  the  League,  about  sending  troops  overseas, 
about  interfering  in  other  people's  quarrels;  all 
there  is  to  know  about  that  we  know,  and  perhaps 
a  bit  more,  too.  Quite  wisely  we  have  sized  up 
the  debit  side  to  see  just  what  we  let  ourselves  in 
for;  have,  indeed,  talked  it  up  hill  and  down  dale 
these  past  eight  months.  But  of  the  actual  plans 


The  League  Skeleton  19 

of  the  League,  of  the  plans  for  preventing  war, 
of  arbitration,  of  disarmament,  of  protecting 
minorities  and  dependent  peoples,  of  safeguarding 
health,  of  preventing  traffic  in  arms,  white  slaves, 
opium  and  drugs,  of  the  free  use  of  ports,  water- 
ways and  railways,  of  the  permanent  Secretariat, 
of  the  home  of  the  League,  of  its  publicity,  we 
know  next  to  nothing. 

Yet  therein  lies  the  real  future  of  the  League. 
It  has  been  called  into  being  not  to  usurp  the 
powers  of  the  various  nations,  but  to  supplement 
them  in  activities  which  no  one  government  can 
alone  handle.  It  will  deal  just  as  much  with 
the  wide  human,  social  problems  of  the  world  as 
with  the  purely  political.  If  its  first  aim  is  to 
keep  people  out  of  war,  it  will  have  many  more 
positive  and  wholly  different  duties.  It  is  too  bad 
we  have  overlooked  this  work,  which  in  a  very  real 
way  answers  the  popular  strivings  for  a  world 
which  not  only  has  ceased  to  fight,  but  which  has 
been  made  a  better  place  to  live  in  through  the  co- 
operation of  all  its  peoples. 

A  bird's-eye  view  of  the  whole  League  machin- 
ery will  show  these  broad  channels  of  activity. 


20         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

All  of  us  know  pretty  well  the  scheme  of  our  own 
government  with  its  Presidency,  its  Constitution, 
its  Executive  Departments  and  its  Supreme  Court, 
and  just  by  seeing  those  divisions  we  see  how  the 
whole  machinery  works.  If  we  could  only  picture 
the  League  in  the  same  way  we  could  easily  pic- 
ture what  it  is  going  to  do,  much  more  easily  in 
fact  than  by  enumerating  the  separate  duties  as 
unrelated  and  detached  activities  not  forming 
part  of  a  single  whole. 

The  League,  of  course,  will  have  a  structure. 
Regardless  of  the  amount  of  power  intrusted  to  it, 
it  must  have  one  or  another  form  of  organization. 
Like  all  human  institutions,  it  will  operate  through 
various  permanent  bodies,  commissions  and  spe- 
cial conferences.  Those  permanent  bodies,  com- 
missions and  conferences  give  perhaps  the  best 
perspective  of  what  the  League  is  really  about. 

Already  the  structure  has  taken  form.  One 
general  international  conference  has  been  held; 
the  Council  has  met  several  times;  certain  special 
commissions  have  been  authorized;  and  a  world 
gathering  stands  not  far  off  in  the  future.  Unos- 
tentatiously the  various  parts  are  being  set  up  un- 


The  League  Skeleton  21 

til  in  a  short  time  we  shall  suddenly  realize  that 
the  international  structure  is  well  on  the  way  to 
its  first  rudimentary  cohesion. 

That  the  League  is  to  have  a  definite  form  is  no 
indication  whatsoever  that  it  is  the  much  dreaded 
superstate.  That  question  must  be  answered  not 
by  the  form  or  organization  of  the  League,  but 
by  the  powers  given  to  it.  The  League  may  or- 
ganize just  as  far  and  as  fast  as  it  wants,  but  its 
organization  will  be  futile  if  it  does  not  have  be- 
hind it  the  legal  and  moral  power  to  make  it  ef- 
fective. So  if  the  structure  which  I  am  to  de- 
scribe seems  most  formidable,  let  it  be  remembered 
that  these  various  bodies  have  very  little  inherent 
power  lodged  within  themselves,  but  are  almost 
entirely  dependent  upon  the  moral  justice  of  each 
particular  action,  which  it  falls  to  them  to  recom- 
mend to  the  member  states. 

Let  me  first  make  a  distinction.  There  are  in 
reality  two  kinds  of  organizations  within  the 
League,  the  first  specifically  provided  by  name, 
and  the  second  developing  out  of  certain  general 
duties  prescribed.  In  other  words,  in  some  cases 
a  specific  body  is  named  to  do  a  specific  thing  and 


22         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

in  other  cases  a  specific  thing  is  agreed  upon  to  be 
done  without,  however,  providing  for  a  specific 
body  to  do  it.  The  first  class,  bodies  specifically 
created  by  name  in  the  Covenant  or  the  Peace 
Treaty,  follows : 

(1)  The  Assembly,   the  world's  most  august 
and  solemn  gathering,  a  meeting  of  all  the  nations 
of  the  League,  containing  perhaps  150  delegates, 
working  under  a  definite  constitution,  competent 
to  discuss  any  matter  affecting  world  peace,  in  a 
large  sense  the  repository  of  final  moral  authority 
in  international  relations. 

(2)  The  Council,  a  small  executive  body  en- 
dowed with  greater  prestige  than  any  other  politi- 
cal organization  in  history,  consisting  of  nine  men 
representing  the  five  great  and  four  small  Powers, 
to  serve  as  a  readily  available  conference  of  the 
nations,  to  hear  disputes,  to  recommend  in  emer- 
gencies and  to  be  a  general  steering  committee. 

(3)  The  Secretariat,  a  permanent  trained  in- 
ternational staff,  appointed  by  the  Council,  free 
from     political     machinations,     organized     into 
bureaus  corresponding  to  the  work  of  the  League, 
and  created  for  the  sole  purposes  of  gathering 


The  League  Skeleton  23 

information,  preparing  plans  and  data  and  carry- 
ing out  the  orders  of  the  Assembly  and  the 
Council. 

(4)  The    Permanent   Court   of   International 
Justice,  the  long-striven-for  world  supreme  court 
for  the  settlement  of  international  disputes,  es- 
pecially of  a  legal  nature,  to  be  composed  proba- 
bly of  fifteen  of  the  world's  most  eminent  jurists, 
chosen  for  ability  rather  than  nationality,  sitting 
permanently  and  evolving  out  of  their  experience 
a  practical  code  of  international  law. 

(5)  The    Permanent    Disarmament    Commis- 
sion, to  prepare  plans  for  the  reduction  of  arma- 
ments for  the  Council  to  approve  and  submit  to 
the  states  as  one  of  the  most  effective  ways  of 
maintaining  peace. 

(6)  The  Permanent  Mandates  Commission,  to 
examine  the  annual  reports  of  the  states  given 
mandates  over  the  thirteen  million  dependent  peo- 
ples intrusted  to  the  League  and  to  advise  the 
Council  on  the  execution  of  this  "  sacred  trust  of 
civilization." 

(7)  The    International    Transit    Commission, 
"  to  secure  and  maintain  freedom  of  communica- 


24         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

tion  and  of  transit  and  equitable  treatment  for  the 
commerce  of  all  members  of  the  League." 

(8)  The  International  Labor  Organization,  a 
body  associated  with  the  League,  consisting  of  an 
annual  International  Conference  and  a  Permanent 
International  Labor  Office,  to  humanize  labor  con- 
ditions, universalize  liberal  legislation  and  estab- 
lish social  justice  as  one  of  the  main  bases  of  peace. 

These  bodies,  specifically  provided  by  name  in 
the  Covenant  or  Treaty,  must  be  created  as  some- 
what distinct  personalities  within  the  League  or- 
ganization, to  be  grouped  together  into  the  com- 
mon scheme  by  the  Assembly  or  the  Council.  Be- 
sides them,  Jiowever,  several  other  main  currents 
of  work  are  outlined  which  must  be  intrusted  to 
other  organizations,  such  as: 

1 i )  International     Health     Office,     to    unite 
through    international    cooperation    the    various 
national  and  semi-official  agencies  seeking  to  im- 
prove health,  prevent  disease  and  mitigate  suffer- 
ing throughout  the  world. 

(2)  International  Bureau  Section,  to  bring  to- 
gether in  common  association  as  many  as  possible 
of  the  five  hundred  existing  international  bureaus 


The  League  Skeleton  25 

which  cover  every  phase  of  international  coopera- 
tion from  postal  regulations  to  the  suppression  of 
the  white  slave  trade. 

(3)  The  Public  Information  Section,  to  issue 
the  Official  Journal  of  the   League,   the   special 
Treaty  Supplement,  the  Press  Review,   and  the 
public  statements,  as  well  as  to  facilitate  world 
transmission  of  news  about  the  League. 

(4)  Treaty   Registration    Section,    to   certify, 
register,  publish  and  distribute  to  all  interested 
parties  all  treaties  henceforth  made  by  members 
of  the  League,  under  the  Covenant  provision  that 
no  Treaty  will  be  considered  binding  unless  so 
registered  &nd  published. 

(5)  Special  Conference  Section,  to  make  all  the 
preparations    for    special    conferences    called    in 
emergencies,  such  as  the  International  Financial 
Conference  and  the   Commission   on   Inquiry  to 
Russia,  both  of  which  were  called  into  being  with- 
out the  slightest  effort  before  the  League  was  four 
months  old. 

Such  is  the  scheme  of  organization.  Just  as 
rapidly  as  possible  the  details  are  being  filled  in. 
Naturally,  however,  it  takes  considerable  time  to 


26         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

prepare  the  plans  and  secure  the  highly  specialized 
personnel  needed  for  such  wholly  new  and  unusual 
work.  There  is  no  great  reservoir  either  of  men 
or  of  experience  from  which  to  draw.  Progress 
must  necessarily  be  gradual  and  cautious.  It 
would  not  have  been  fair  to  expect  the  League  to 
burst  forth  into  immediate,  full-blown  activity 
amidst  problems  so  complex  and  so  dangerous  as 
those  which  it  must  face.  Nevertheless,  within 
the  first  few  months  the  way  was  pointed  out,  and 
pointed  out  clearly. 

Whether  that  way  be  followed  depends  on  the 
peoples  of  the  world.  The  League  will  not  func- 
tion all  by  itself.  It  has  no  mystic  self-starter. 
It  is  utterly  dependent  on  the  interest,  imagination 
and  enthusiasm  of  the  public.  It  will  live  only 
through  the  lifeblood  of  popular  interest. 

You  cannot  create  a  machine  and  then  walk 
away  and  expect  it  to  work  of  itself.  Everything 
made  by  human  hands  or  brains,  whether  a  gaso- 
line engine  or  a  political  organization,  requires 
the  constant  presence,  stimulation  and  enthusiasm 
of  its  creators.  If  they  stay  with  it,  watch  it, 


The  League  Skeleton  27 

help  it,  urge  it,  even  drive  it,  it  will  move  forward. 
If  they  do  not,  it  stops. 

So  with  the  machinery  of  the  League.  Its  As- 
sembly and  Council,  its  Court  and  its  Secretariat, 
its  Commissions  on  Disarmaments  and  Mandates, 
its  international  organizations  for  health  and  for 
labor,  will  ultimately  stop  if  the  peoples  which 
have  created  them  lose  interest  and  turn  away. 
The  nations  will  never  disarm  simply  because  there 
is  a  disarmament  commission,  nor  submit  their 
troubles  to  a  court  simply  because  a  court  has  been 
created.  Behind  the  organization  there  must  be 
the  urge.  If  there  is  the  urge,  the  organization 
will  be  used,  will  develop,  will  fulfill  hopes. 

Here  lies  the  crux  of  the  League's  future. 
The  Covenant  has  been  signed;  the  organization 
brought  together;  everything  made  ready  for  the 
impact  of  popular  interest  and  stimulation.  The 
League  will  certainly  fail  if  it  is  regarded  as  a 
far-away,  distant,  impersonal  body  which  will  run 
along  of  its  own  momentum,  for  no  body  of  men 
in  Geneva  or  any  other  place,  no  matter  how 
sincere  and  devoted,  can  give  life  to  principles 


28         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

which  should  be  given  world-wide  stimulus.  The 
League  is  on  the  contrary  the  personal  and  repre- 
sentative creature  of  each  and  all  of  us,  directed 
by  us  to  do  certain  specific  tasks  not  otherwise  pos- 
sible, and  responsible  to  us  for  their  execution. 

The  success  of  the  League  will  depend,  not  on 
its  written  powers  and  its  organization,  but  on  the 
will  of  the  peoples  who  have  created  it.  Its  suc- 
cess will  be  our  success;  its  failure  will  be  our 
failure. 


THE    ASSEMBLY  AND  THE  COUNCIL 

SHOULD  the  United  States  have  more  power  in 
the  League  of  Nations  than,  say,  Nicaragua  or 
Siam,  or  only  as  much?  Looking  at  our  popula- 
tion, wealth,  power  and  civilization,  we  say  more. 
Nicaragua  or  Siam,  looking  at  their  national  sov- 
ereignties, say  they  are  just  as  much  sovereign 
states  as  we  and  should  have  an  equal  vote. 

There  we  have  the  great  basic  difficulty  of  all 
international  organization.  The  great  Powers 
have  refused,  and  rightly,  to  abandon  their  power. 
Controlling  the  world  as  they  do  they  have  not 
been  willing  to  surrender  that  control  to  the  small 
states.  Sovereignty  may  be  all  right,  they  cor- 
rectly say,  but  it  does  not  carry  to  the  extreme  of 
denying  the  reality  of  comparative  national 
strength  and  responsibility. 

But  the  small  states,  while  recognizing  this  fact 
of  power,  have  been  equally  unwilling,  and  not 
without  reason,  to  add  a  legal  basis  to  it  through 

29 


30        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

any  formal  recognition.  Whenever  they  get  into 
trouble  it  is  quite  simple  to  say  that  as  national 
sovereignties  they  are  entitled  to  all  the  dignity 
and  position  attaching  to  any  other  sovereign 
power. 

This  is  a  hard  hurdle  to  get  over.  But  even 
suppose  it  can  be  gotten  over,  what  country  can 
be  found  which  today  is  willing  to  put  itself  in 
the  hands  of  even  its  peers  ?  None,  most  emphat- 
ically. Sovereignty  is  a  jealous  right  which  per- 
mits no  challenge.  Consequently,  even  if  we  can 
arrange  a  system  whereby  both  the  United  States 
and  Siam  can  express  their  views  with  full  satis- 
faction to  both,  we  must  see  that  neither  has  the 
legal  right  to  force  decision  upon  the  other. 

To  steer  an  international  organization  through 
these  tempestuous  waters  is  far  worse  than  the 
classical  Scylla  and  Charybdis.  Hard  aport  we 
have  the  rocks  of  the  dreaded  superstate;  at  star- 
board we  have  the  shoals  of  the  mere  debating 
society;  underneath  we  must  sound  for  the  reefs 
of  national  sovereignty.  To  come  through  even 
with  safety  is  difficult;  to  come  through  without 
jettisoning  cargo  has  never  yet  been  done. 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council  31 

The  League  of  Nations  plan,  however,  appears 
to  have  succeeded.  A  system  has  been  worked 
out  whereby  the  big  states  retain  their  preponder- 
ance of  influence,  the  little  states  retain  their  full 
dignity,  and  all  retain  their  sovereignty.  On  the 
one  hand  the  superstate  is  avoided  —  on  the 
other  the  purposeless  debating  society.  An  or- 
ganization has  been  attained  which  leaves  unim- 
paired the  independence  of  action  of  the  nations, 
while  at  the  same  time  promising  effective  cooper- 
ation among  them. 

This  has  been  done  by  a  harmonizing  of  the 
two  principles.  That  harmonizing  is  nothing  new 
indeed,  for  it  is  exactly  what  took  place  when  the 
thirteen  proud  and  sovereign  States  of  America 
met  to  form  their  union.  Each  State,  regardless 
of  size,  was  given  two  votes  in  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States;  then  each  State  was  given  a  num- 
ber of  votes  in  the  House  of  Representatives  pro- 
portional to  its  population.  The  ideas  of  sover- 
eignty and  power  were  thus  both  satisfied- 

So  with  the  League.  Both  an  Assembly  and 
a  Council  have  been  created,  the  Assembly  to 
contain  all  states  with  a  single  vote  for  each  one, 


32         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

and  the  Council  to  contain  the  nine  most  impor- 
tant states,  again  with  a  single  vote  for  each. 
The  little  Powers  will  have  their  say  in  terms  of 
full  equality  in  the  Assembly;  the  big  Powers  will 
retain  their  preponderance  of  influence  through 
the  Council.  Thus  the  United  States  and  Nica- 
ragua or  Siam  are  placed  in  a  correct  practical  re- 
lationship to  each  other,  without  sacrificing  the 
power  of  the  former  or  the  pride  of  the  latter. 

Probably  the  most  curious  bogey  that  has  been 
raised  about  the  League  of  Nations  is  that  it  is 
a  superstate.  So  simple  is  it  of  disproof  that  one 
cannot  but  wonder,  first  if  it  does  not  in  reality 
spring  from  ignorance,  and  second  how  it  has  be- 
come so  generally  believed.  It  is  a  bogey,  indeed, 
which  no  intelligent  public  should  allow  to  be 
raised  to  becloud  a  vitally  important  issue  which 
even  in  its  clearest  presentation  cannot  but  be  per- 
plexing to  a  conscientious  citizen. 

The  League  of  Nations  is  not  a  superstate,  first 

because  practically  all  its  decisions  must  be  made 

vby  unanimous  vote  and  second  because  even  when 

made  they  are  still  but  recommendations  which 

the  various  governments  may  accept  or  reject  as 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council  33 

they  see  fit.  Neither  the  Assembly  nor  the  Coun- 
cil, therefore,  can  become  either  a  world  Parlia- 
ment or  a  world  executive.  Quite  on  the  con- 
trary, they  will  both  be  but  international  meeting 
places  for  discussion  and,  if  possible,  for  agree- 
ment on  policies  of  common  interest  to  be  sub- 
mitted to  the  various  members  of  the  League. 

First  as   regards   unanimity.     "  Except  where  ? 
otherwise  provided,"  reads  the  Covenant,  "de-? 
cisions  at  any  meeting  of  the  Assembly  or  the 
Council  shall  require  the  agreement  of  all  mem- 
bers of  the  League  represented  at  the  meeting." 
In  other  words  a  single  dissenting  state  of  the 
forty-odd  in  the  Assembly  or   the   nine   on  the 
Council  can  block  decision  by  its  single  vote.     It 
is  difficult  to  see  how  national  sovereignty  could 
be  more  fully  safeguarded. 

It  is,  however,  for  the  action  of  the  League 
has  no  validity  until  it  has  been  accepted  by  the 
individual  states.  It  may  lay  down  projects  for 
disarmament,  prepare  treaties  on  international 
labor  conditions,  suggest  the  use  of  troops  in  cer- 
tain emergencies,  or  reach  decisions  on  a  hundred 
and  one  different  international  questions,  but  all 


34         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

those  decisions  must  be  ratified  in  some  way  or 
other  by  the  national  authorities  before  they  be- 
come binding.  The  League's  sole  authority  is 
the  moral  authority  inherent  in  the  decisions  them- 
selves and  the  fact  that  they  come  from  a  meeting 
of  world  powers. 

Undoubtedly  this  is  a  tremendous  weakness  for 
the  League.  Many  who  know  the  League  best 
fear  that  instead  of  being  a  superstate  it  will  be 
powerless.  They  say  that  unanimity  will  be  im- 
possible of  attainment  on  nearly  all  issues.  Cer- 
tainly it  will  be  very  difficult.  It  does  not  seem 
reasonable  that  people  should  lie  awake  nights 
worrying  about  the  sovereignty  of  the  United 
States  when  by  our  single  vote  we  can  block  action 
in  either  body. 

Isn't  it,  then,  merely  a  debating  society?  you 
may  well  ask.  No,  because  when  international  is- 
sues become  outlined,  there  is  the  strongest  pos- 
sible tendency  to  so  work  them  out  as  to  form  a 
compromise  acceptable  to  all.  Nothing  should 
be  adopted  by  an  international  organization  unless 
it  is  acceptable  to  a  big  majority  of  the  world,  and 
if  it  is  so  acceptable  to  a  big  majority  it  is  almost 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council          35 

certain  that  the  small  minority  will  find  a  way  to 
fall  into  line  rather  than  bear  the  odium  of  block- 
ing all  progressive  world  action.  The  League  of 
Nations  may  be  a  slow-moving  body,  like  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  but  again 
like  the  Supreme  Court,  it  will  move  right  when  it 
does  move. 

The  six-votes-to-one  issue  which  has  been  used 
so  undiscriminatingly  against  the  League  of  Na- 
tions is  nearly  as  hollow  as  the  superstate  issue. 
The  rule  that  unanimous  consent  is  required  for 
all  decisions  in  the  Council  obviously  means  that 
any  one  nation  can  block  any  decision  distasteful 
to  it.  The  same  rule  applies  to  the  Assembly, 
with  a  few  specified  exceptions,  which  it  is  perhaps 
important  to  enumerate  in  order  to  show  in  what 
instances  a  member  of  the  League  could  be  out- 
voted by  the  six  votes  of  the  states  of  the  British 
Empire. 

The  selection  of  the  four  non-permanent  mem- 
bers of  the  Council  is  by  majority  vote  of  the 
Assembly;  the  election  of  new  members  of  the 
League  by  two-thirds  vote;  and  questions  of  pro- 
cedure  and  committees*  by  majority.  Surely  these 


36         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

cases  are  not  vitally  important  when  the  whole 
range  of  the  League  is  considered  and  should  not 
be  exaggerated  into  a  general  charge  that  the 
British  Empire  would  outvote  other  members  of 
the  League  six  to  one  on  all  issues.  Its  six  votes 
indeed  are  practically  valueless  for  any  selfish  im- 
perial policy,  while  at  the  same  time  they  afford  a 
constant  temptation  to  independence  for  the  vari- 
ous self-governing  partners  in  the  Empire. 

Let  us  now  analyze  the  Assembly  and  the  Coun- 
cil as  the  two  outstanding  features  of  the  League. 
Already  the  Council  has  held  many  sessions  of 
considerable  world  importance,  and  the  Assembly 
itself  is  due  to  come  together  within  the  near 
future.  Never  in  history  has  there  ever  been  any- 
thing comparable  to  them,  for  they  have  now  be- 
come a  part  of  the  organic  law  of  nations,  meeting 
regularly  and  not  spasmodically,  as  the  Hague 
Conference,  and  with  definite  powers. 

The  Assembly  is  in  the  final  analysis  the  most 
august  assemblage  in  the  world,  for  it  is  the  meet- 
ing place  of  the  representatives  of  all  nations,  the 
place  where  sovereign  states  come  together  as 
peers  to  discuss  the  whole  range  of  their  common 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council  37 

affairs.  Anything  affecting  the  peace  of  the  world 
can  come  before  it,  which  in  reality  means  almost 
anything. 

Obviously  such  a  body  will  be  cumbrous  and  un- 
wieldy. With  perhaps  fifty  nations  represented, 
and  each  nation  entitled  to  three  delegates,  you 
have  a  membership  of  150,  which  is  too  large  for 
detailed  work.  The  Assembly  discussions  will 
naturally,  therefore,  tend  to  confine  themselves  to 
the  broadest  principles,  to  general  codes  of  law, 
to  fundamental  policies  such  as  disarmament,  pro- 
tection of  minorities  and  backward  peoples,  to  the 
pronouncement  of  the  bases  of  international  law; 
in  short  to  the  main  currents  of  international  life 
and  relationship. 

Besides  this,  or  perhaps  as  a  direct  illustration 
of  this,  certain  specific  powers  are  granted  it  by 
the  Covenant,  such  as  the  selection  of  the  four 
smaller  nations  to  be  represented  on  the  Council; 
approval  of  the  Council's  choice  for  Secretary- 
General  of  the  League,  admission  of  new  mem- 
bers, and  amendments  of  the  Covenant.  These 
powers  are  important,  for  they  influence  the  com- 
position of  the  Council,  control  the  formation  of 


38         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

the  Secretariat  and  affect  the  membership  and  con- 
stitution of  the  League  itself.  This  last  power, 
for  instance,  means  the  admission  or  the  exclusion 
of  Germany  and  Russia. 

The  first  meeting  of  the  Assembly  was  to  have 
been  held  in  Washington  in  1919.  The  Treaty 
situation  here,  however,  made  that  impossible,  and 
also  delayed  the  whole  process  of  forming  the 
League  overseas.  By  the  time  of  the  meeting  of 
the  Council  in  Rome  on  May  19,  however,  every- 
thing was  in  order  to  request  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  who  is  entrusted  with  that  task  in 
the  Covenant,  to  summon  the  first  session  to  meet 
jn  Brussels  in  November,  1920.  Four  months,  it 
was  estimated,  will  be  required  to  distribute  the 
agenda,  allow  the  proper  study  by  each  govern- 
ment, and  make  the  arrangements  for  travel,  quar- 
ters, interpreters  and  all  the  other  details  essen- 
tial to  a  smooth-running  meeting. 

Thus  for  the  first  time  the  nations  of  the  world 
come  together  under  a  written  constitution  and 
with  certain  definitely  defined  powers.  This  As- 
sembly will  be  as  different  as  possible  from  those 
Hague  meetings  which  met  almost  at  the  whim  of 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council          39 

an  individual,  had  no  definite  powers  or  constitu- 
tion, very  little  preparation,  and  practically  no 
obligations. 

These  Assembly  meetings  will  be  a  most  impor- 
tant factor  in  moulding  international  public  opin- 
ion. They  will  help  the  public  all  over  the  world 
to  think  internationally,  to  look  at  public  affairs 
not  only  from  the  sectional  point  of  view,  but  also 
from  the  broad  human  international  point  of 
view.  The  periodic  debates  will  create  a  strong 
body  of  international  opinion  behind  and  in  sup- 
port of  the  League  and  give  people  their  first  op- 
portunity of  hearing  world  subjects  discussed  from 
an  international  platform,  neutralizing  narrow  na- 
tional prejudices. 

Obviously,  however,  an  Assembly  of  150  mem- 
bers is  too  cumbrous  to  manage  the  ordinary  ruck 
and  run  of  international  difficulties.  It  would 
take  too  long  to  get  it  together;  there  would  be 
too  much  speech-making  and  too  many  •  merely 
obstinate  expressions  of  individual  opinion  to 
make  it  an  effective  executive  body.  If  it  were 
the  only  mechanism  of  the  League  the  League 
would  grind  ponderously  along,  enunciating  broad 


40         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

principles,  never  reaching  troubles  until  they  had 
become  desperate,  and  probably  in  the  end  found- 
ering in  its  own  ineptitude. 

Hence  we  have  the  Council.  This  is  a  small 
body  of  nine  members  focussing  the  political  and 
moral  power  of  the  world  about  one  small  table. 
Undoubtedly  it  possesses  greater  prestige  than  any 
political  body  in  history.  For  though  its  votes 
must  be  unanimous,  and  even  then  take  the  form 
merely  of  recommendations  to  the  various  states, 
nevertheless  when  it  is  considered  that  it  is  com- 
posed of  representatives  of  the  nine  greatest 
world  Powers  acting  under  instructions  from 
home,  its  recommendations  will  prove  extremely 
powerful. 

Yet  there  is  always  the  safeguard  that  those 
recommendations  can  be  given  only  on  unanimous 
vote.  For  instance,  no  recommendation  embar- 
rassing to  the  United  States  could  be  made  without 
the  approval  of  the  American  representative,  who 
would  of  course  be  controlled  from  Washington. 
This  is  a  great  limitation  of  power,  to  be  sure,  but 
a  limitation  necessary  in  these  days  of  jealous 
sovereignty.  Yet  the  power  that  remains  is  tre- 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council          41 

mendous.  Never  before  has  machinery  existed  to 
marshal  what  may  be  called  the  effective  moral 
and  political  opinion  of  the  world. 

The  method  of  organization  of  the  Council  is 
vital;  also  ingenious.  While  the  Assembly  in- 
cludes all  states,  the  Council  as  an  effective  execu- 
tive body  must  naturally  be  a  selection  of  the  most 
powerful.  In  order  to  harmonize  all  viewpoints, 
agreement  was  finally  hit  upon  that  the  great 
Powers  should  sit  permanently  and  the  little 
Powers  sit  in  rotation  and  in  proportion  to  their 
world  influence. 

The  most  powerful  states  were  easily  se- 
lected. Obviously  they  were  the  Big  Five  which 
had  won  the  war,  the  United  States,  Great 
Britain,  France,  Italy  and  Japan.  There  could 
be  but  little  contest  on  this  score.  Certainly  none 
of  the  other  Allied  nations  could  dispute  these  re- 
alities of  power,  and  no  great  neutrals  existed. 
Certain  big  states  were  left  out,  notably  Germany 
and  Russia,  but  places  were  consciously  held  open 
for  them  upon  qualification.  Here  then  was  a 
ready-made  nucleus  for  the  Council. 

But  that  nucleus  left  open  the  question  of  the 


42         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

small  states.  Obviously  they  must  be  represented, 
but  in  what  proportion?  If  there  were  but  five 
great  Powers,  there  must  certainly  be  less  than 
five  little  Powers;  otherwise  the  little  Powers 
would  overturn  the  balance  and  the  big  Powers 
would  refuse  to  take  part.  Finally  it  was  agreed 
that  the  proportion  would  be  five  to  four,  which 
is  a  more  generous  basis  of  recognition  than  the 
little  Powers  have  ever  before  succeeded  in  secur- 
ing. The  Swiss  well  point  out  that  the  big  Pow- 
ers control  700,000,000  of  the  peoples  of  the 
world,  as  against  550,000,000  controlled  by  all 
the  other  League  members. 

This  again,  however,  left  open  the  method  of 
the  selection  of  these  four  Powers  from  the  forty- 
odd  candidate  states.  The  first  four  states  to  be 
represented  were  arbitrarily  chosen  by  the  Peace 
Conference,  to  include  Belgium,  Spain,  Greece  and 
Brazil,  which  is  not  such  a  bad  representation. 
But  the  length  of  time  of  membership  and  the 
consequent  method  of  replacement  was  left  open, 
except  that  the  decision  was  a  function  of  the 
Assembly. 

The  little  Powers  do  not  like  this  uncertainty. 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council  43 

They  want  to  have  a  method  in  their  selection. 
So  already  they  are  proposing  various  schemes  of 
rotation,  whereby  each  may  be  assured  member- 
ship in  turn.  This  is  wholly  in  line  with  the  de- 
sires of  the  big  Powers,  and  will  undoubtedly  be 
worked  out  shortly.  One  of  the  most  cherished 
provisions  is  that  any  state  not  a  member  of  the  • 
Council  may  sit  as  a  full  member  if  its  interests 
are  particularly  involved. 

The  duties  of  the  Council  cover  the  whole  range  < 
of  international  relations.  Anything  endangering 
the  peace  of  the  world,  any  threat  of  war  and 
any  dispute  likely  to  lead  to  a  break  fall  within  its 
field.  It  is  the  supreme  conciliation  body  to  which 
disputes  not  referred  to  the  Permanent  Court 
must  be  submitted  before  war  is  declared.  It  can 
take  up  any  question  that  it  sees  fit  to  take  up. 

Besides  it  has  many  specific  duties.  It  is\ 
charged  with  certain  territories  intrusted  to  the 
League,  such  as  the  Saar,  Danzig  and  the  man- 
dated territories.  It  shall  submit  plans  for  dis- 
armament, for  the  protection  of  nations  against 
external  aggression,  and  for  the  employment  of 
the  boycott  or  other  measures  against  a  nation 


44         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

breaking  faith.  It  will  do  the  day-to-day  work, 
meet  all  sudden  emergencies  and  prepare  all  ques- 
tions for  the  Assembly. 

The  Council  has  met  frequently  during  the  early 
life  of  the  League.  Its  meetings  have  ushered  in 
a  new  spirit  in  the  relations  of  states.  The 
League  may  or  may  not  become  all  that  its  sup- 
porters hope,  but  at  least  it  has  already  marked  a 
big  step  forward.  Read  the  description  of  the 
first  historic  session  as  sent  by  Mr.  Edwin  L. 
James  to  the  New  York  Times  January  16,  1920: 

"  The  League  of  Nations  is  a  reality.  Mod- 
estly and  democratically,  it  began  to  function  this 
morning  at  10:30  o'clock,  when  the  Executive 
Council  opened  its  first  meeting  in  the  Clock  Room 
of  the  French  Foreign  Ministry. 

"  Nine  men  gathered  about  a  green-covered 
table  in  one  end  of  the  salon  of  crimson  and  gold 
and  put  in  motion  the  machinery  of  the  most  am- 
bitious experiment  in  government  man  has  ever 
essayed,  while  a  hundred  or  more  diplomats  from 
the  four  corners  of  the  earth  looked  on.  The 
nine  men  gathered  about  the  table  started  a  work 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council  45 

which  may  influence  the  lives  of  untold  millions 
of  humans  for  centuries  to  come. 

"  It  was  significant  of  the  dawn  of  a  new  polit- 
ical era  that  this  council  of  statesmen  was  so 
largely  attended.  It  had  the  effect  of  robbing  the 
session  of  some  of  the  dignity  which  has  usually 
attended  the  meetings  of  statesmen.  The  Clock 
Room  was  crowded  to  the  doors,  with  many  stand- 
ing, so  that  the  green-covered  table  and  its  nine 
men  were  almost  obscured.  Lloyd-George  was 
among  the  spectators,  and  so  were  some  stenog- 
raphers attending  unofficially.  The  crowd  was 
democratic  and  mixed  in  its  make-up.  Men  of 
all  colors  and  all  stations  in  life  saw  the  League 
start.  Therefore  the  seeming  lack  of  dignity 
might  be  a  virtue  rather  than  a  fault." 

Following  this  meeting  in  Paris,  a  second  was 
held  in  London  on  February  n,  a  third  and  a 
fourth  in  Paris  on  March  13  and  April  9,  and  a 
fifth  in  Rome  on  May  14.  Big  work  was  done 
at  these  gatherings,  in  short  the  organization  work 
of  the  League.  Without  attempting  to  go  into 
detail,  the  Permanent  Court  of  International  Jus- 


46         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

tice,  the  International  Health  Office,  the  Perma- 
nent Armaments  Commission,  the  Permanent 
Commission  on  Freedom  of  Communications  and 
Transit,  and  the  Permanent  Secretariat  were  all 
started  on  their  way.  In  addition  much  political 
work  was  done.  The  Saar  Valley  Governing 
Commission  and  the  High  Commissioner  of  Dan- 
zig were  appointed;  the  obligations  for  the  protec- 
tion of  Polish  and  other  minorities  were  assumed; 
and  the  status  of  Armenia  fully  discussed  with  the 
Council  of  Premiers. 

More  indicative,  however,  of  the  quickening 
value  of  the  Council  upon  international  relations, 
was  its  action  on  the  Russian  and  financial  situa- 
tions. Here  were  two  great  crises  facing  the 
world,  one  the  relations  of  the  non-Bolshevist  na- 
tions to  the  Soviet  and  the  other  the  world's  des- 
perate financial  situation.  Under  the  old  system 
international  cooperation  would  not  have  been  pos- 
sible in  either  case  without  the  greatest  formality 
and  pompousness  and  a  delay  which  would  prob- 
ably have  negatived  the  results.  Under  the 
League,  however,  a  Commission  of  Inquiry  to 
Russia  and  an  International  Financial  Conference 


The  Assembly  and  the  Council  47 

were  both  set  under  way  with  only  a  few  minutes' 
discussion,  assuring  immediate,  world-wide  co- 
operation on  these  two  vital  subjects. 

The  Council  is  a  business  body.  It  is  organ- 
ized to  secure  results;  consequently  its  method  of 
procedure  is  interesting.  The  agenda  of  the 
meeting  is  prepared  by  the  Secretary-General  in 
consultation  with  the  presiding  officer;  a  full 
study  of  each  subject  is  made  by  the  members  of 
the  Secretariat  and  circulated  a  month  before  the 
meeting;  the  subjects  are  then  divided  up  among 
the  various  Council  members;  each  member  then 
makes  a  study  of  his  special  subject  aided  by  the 
permanent  official  who  has  prepared  it;  an  in- 
formal business  meeting  is  then  held  for  discus- 
sion; after  which  the  public  session  is  held,  with 
each  member  reporting  fully  the  subject  entrusted 
to  him.  This  system  brings  about  the  closest 
liaison  between  the  permanent  staff  and  the  Coun- 
cil members;  assures  adequate  preparation;  gives 
opportunity  for  private  discussion;  and  registers 
the  final  results  in  a  public  session. 

The  greatest  fact  about  the  Council  is  that  its 
meetings  must  be  at  frequent  intervals  and  at  least 


48         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

annual.  In  other  words,  the  nations  of  the  world 
have  agreed  to  come  together  in  executive  session 
at  least  once  a  year.  At  that  time  the  world's 
effective  moral  and  political  power  will  meet  about 
a  common  table,  in  a  session  small  enough  to  do  £ 
business,  to  consider  any  sore  spot  that  may  have 
arisen  among  the  nations.  If  there  is  anything  in 
the  theory  that  an  ounce  of  prevention  is  worth  a 
pound  of  cure,  we  have  it  here.  What  would  this 
system  not  have  meant  in  July,  1914? 

In  the  Assembly  and  the  Council,  then,  we  have 
the  top  of  the  League,  the  one  the  general  meeting 
ground  of  all  nations,  the  other  the  small  execu- 
tive committee  of  the  most  powerful  nations. 
Through  this  double  system  we  assure  both  a  gen- 
eral gathering  of  all  states  and  a  frequent  gather- 
ing of  the  important  states.  In  other  words  we 
harmonize  the  claims  of  sovereignty  with  the 
realities  of  power. 


THE  LEAGUE  IN  1914 

JUST  what  might  have  happened  in  those  des- 
perate days  of  late  July  and  early  August,  1914, 
if  the  League  of  Nations  had  been  in  existence 
may  well  be  discussed  at  this  point.  For  Sir  Ed- 
ward Grey's  statement,  that  if  the  League  ma- 
chinery had  been  available  the  World  War  would 
not  have  taken  place,  is  almost  staggering  in  its 
boldness.  It  cannot  pass  unchallenged.  Let  us 
analyze,  step  by  step,  the  various  courses  which 
would  have  been  open  as  perhaps  the  best  way  of 
seeing  just  how  the  League  would  have  operated 
in  mankind's  supreme  <  crisis  and  how  it  may  be 
expected  to  operate  in  future  crises. 

What,  in  essence,  was  the  dispute  between  Aus- 
tria and  Servia?  That  is  a  vital  question,  be- 
cause the  Covenant  which  we  are  to  apply  to  that 
crisis  recognizes  two  distinct  kinds.  Broadly,  in- ! 
ternational  differences  revolve  about  points  either 
of  law  or  of  policy.  They  may,  consequently,  be 

49 


50        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

settled  either  by  judicial  or  by  political  action. 
You  may  go  to  court  to  find  out  what  the  exact 
facts  are  or  you  may  go  \to  arbitrators  who  will 
attempt  by  compromise  to  harmonize  two  conflict- 
ing lines  of  policy. 

There  is  all  the  world  of  difference  in  these 
distinctions.  The  line  is  no  mere  academic  one. 
In  the  lives  of  individuals,  to  be  sure,  it  has  largely 
been  obliterated,  because  individuals  submit,  in- 
deed, must  submit,  to  the  supreme  authority  of  the 
state.  In  international  affairs,  however,  no  such 
supreme  authority  exists  or  is  likely  to  exist. 
States  may  be  willing  to  accept  court  findings  as  to 
facts  or  law,  but  they  are  and  will  be  chary  of 
binding  themselves  to  accept  decisions  as  to 
policies. 

Two  radically  different  processes  are  provided 
in  the   Covenant   to  meet   these   different  cases. 
Provision  is  made  for  the  settlement  of  disputes 
both  by  arbitrators  dealing  with  policies  and  com- 
\  promises,   and  by  judges  dealing  with  facts  and 
•.  laws.      For  the  former,  the  Council  or  the  Assem- 
bly is  to  be  a  general  solvent;  for  the  latter  a 
Permanent   Court   of  International  Justice  with 


The  League  in  1914  51 

world-famous  jurists  and  a  constantly  increasing 
body  of  international  law  is  established. 

The  dispute  between  Austria  and  Servia  cen- 
tered about  alleged  Servian  attempts  to  stir  up  the 
Serbs  within  Austria  to  a  revolt  against  the  Aus- 
trian Government.  Questions  of  fact  undoubt- 
edly were  involved,  but  in  the  main  the  trouble 
ran  so  deep  as  to  be  undeniably  political.  This 
is  well  shown  by  General  Smuts'  admirable  defi- 
nition of  this  type  of  case : 

'  We  are  here  in  the  region  of  the  most  danger- 
ous and  intractable  causes  of  war,  where  passions 
run  high,  not  only  among  the  disputants  but  among 
their  partisans.  The  issues  are  generally  vague 
and  intangible  and  spring  from  special  grounds 
of  national  psychology.  They  involve  large  ques- 
tions of  policy,  of  so-called  vital  interests,  and  of 
national  honor.  It  is  round  these  issues  and  ques- 
tions that  national  and  international  passions 
gather  like  storm  clouds  until  the  thunder  of  war 
can  alone  clear  the  air  again.  They  cannot  be 
disposed  of  along  judicial  lines.  Above  all  they 
require  that  tactful,  diplomatic  negotiation  and 
conciliation  which  great  statesmen  know  best  how 


52         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

to  bring  to  bear  on  delicate  and  dangerous  dis- 
putation." 

Exactly  such  was  the  Austro-Servian  dispute. 
Exactly  such  also,  was  the  procedure  which  Sir 
Edward  Grey  attempted  to  apply  to  it  before  the 
war  was  finally  touched  off.  He  failed,  because 
both  the  machinery  and  the  obligation  to  use  it 
were  lacking.  Austria  was  free  to  careen  madly 
ahead;  indeed  found  a  positive  advantage  in  so 
doing.  But  Sir  Edward  Grey's  pitifully  human 
plea,  that  it  could  all  have  been  avoided,  remains 
with  us  to  prove  or  disprove  in  the  last  smoulder- 
ing horror  of  the  holocaust  and  as  the  best  pre- 
caution against  a  repetition. 

To  begin  at  the  very  beginning.  The  moment 
the  Austro-Servian  crisis  had  developed  into  a 
threat  of  war,  it  would,  under  the  Covenant,  have 
automatically  become  a  matter  of  concern  to  every 
member  of  the  League.  This  most  emphatically 
does  not  mean  that  any  obligation  whatsoever 
would  have  been  imposed  on  the  states;  it  simply 
means  that  they  would  have  had  the  fullest  right 
to  consider  the  matter  their  own  if  they  saw  fit. 
At  any  moment  from  the  flash  of  the  assassin's 


The  League  in  1914  53 

bullet  at  Serajevo  to  the  bombardment  of  Bel- 
grade, any  nation  would  have  been  free  to  inter- 
cede in  any  way  it  thought  best  to  preserve  world 
peace. 

That  would  have  amounted  to  very  little,  you 
may  retort.  Perhaps  so,  for  nations  will  always 
be  gingerly  about  interceding  in  a  quarrel  not 
their  own.  But  it  is  a  decided  advance  over  the 
previous  theory  that  each  nation  is  so  self-sufficient 
in  its  own  narrow  pride  that  it  stands  superior  to 
any  action  not  its  own  immediate  concern.  Law- 
breakers tend  to  be  held  back  by  the  knowledge 
that  a  threat  to  the  world's  peace  is  not  exclusively 
their  own  private  business,  but  is  the  business  of 
every  nation  in  the  League. 

The  second  step  goes  much  farther.  Any 
nation  may  bring  about  a  meeting  of  the  Council 
whenever  it  thinks  there  is  a  threat  of  war.  Con- 
sider what  this  would  have  meant  in  1914.  Sir 
Edward  Grey  would  not  have  had  to  bombard  all 
the  main  capitals  of  Europe  with  telegrams  in  the 
vain  hope  of  getting  the  nations  about  a  common 
table  to  which  not  one  of  them  had  the  obligation 
and  not  all  of  them  the  desire  to  go.  He  would 


54        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

simply  have  notified  the  Secretary-General  of  the 
League,  who  would  have  automatically  invited 
the  nations  to  their  regular  meeting  place.  If 
some  had  not  come  the  guilt  would  have  been  ob- 
vious. If  they  all  had 

Instead  then,  in  the  future,  of  a  lone  states- 
man frantically  endeavoring,  even  as  the  guns  are 
being  unlimbered,  to  get  the  nations  to  do  the  sim- 
ple, human  thing  of  meeting  together  to  try  to  find 
a  way  out  short  of  war,  we  have  assurance  that  the 
minute  an  international  sore  begins  to  fester,  the 
world's  leaders  will  gather  almost  automatically 
to  try  to  cure  it.  And  this  does  not  mean  merely 
the  European  nations,  with  their  particular,  in- 
grown difficulties,  nor  the  so-called  big  Powers, 
with  their  mutual  jealousies,  but  rather  the  rep- 
resentatives of  all  four  continents  and  of  all  kinds 
of  peoples. 

This  is  a  sort  of  general  blanket  insurance  ap- 
plying to  cases  in  which  the  nations  taking  action 
may  not  be  primarily  concerned.  The  far  more 
difficult  thing  is  to  get  the  nations  to  bring  in  their 
own  individual  troubles  for  settlement.  But  here 
a  revolutionary  principle  has  been  accepted,  a 


The  League  in  1914  55 

principle  for  the  peaceful  settlement  of  interna- 
tional disputes  for  which  the  United  States  has 
been  striving  ever  since  the  first  Hague  Confer- 
ence. While  not  finally  prohibiting  a  just  war, 
it  is  the  greatest  single  step  ever  taken  towards 
the  reign  of  peace  in  the  world. 

"  The  members  of  the  League  agree  that  if 
there  should  arise  between  them  any  dispute  likely 
to  lead  to  a  rupture,  they  will  submit  the  matter, 
either  to  arbitration  or  to  enquiry  by  the  Council, 
and  they  agree  in  no  case  to  resort  to  war  until 
three  months  after  the  award  by  the  arbitrators 
or  the  report  of  the  Council."  This  single  sen- 
tence of  less-than  sixty  words,  to  which  nearly 
two  score  sovereign  states  have  pledged  them- 
selves in  the  Covenant,  constitutes  the  greatest  ad- 
vance towards  compulsory  arbitration  possible  to 
sovereign  states. 

Suppose  this  had  been  in  existence  in  July, 
1914.  Is  it  conceivable  that  the  Great  War 
would  have  come  about?  Picture  how  there 
would  dissolve  before  such  an  understanding  the 
hurried  ultimatum  to  Austria,  the  secret  mobiliza- 
tion of  Russia  and  Germany,  the  futile  criss-cross- 


56        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

ing  of  telegrams,  the  final  pell-mell  catastrophe 
when  the  nations  almost  tumbled  over  each  other 
to  be  the  first  into  war.  Three  months  of  grace; 
three  months  of  the  operation  of  all  the  world's 
corrective  forces  stimulated  by  a  keenly  alert, 
fully  conscious  world  public  opinion,  what  would 
they  not  have  meant? 

This  then  will  be  the  chronology  of  the  future. 
A  dispute  will  mount  in  bitterness;  one  nation  or 
the  other  will  request  arbitration  or  judicial  set- 
tlement, or  a  third  nation  may  call  a  Council  meet- 
ing; the  world  will  know  all  the  facts  and  the  se- 
riousness of  the  crisis;  the  Court  or  the  Council 
will  go  into  session  in  the  spotlight  of  world  atten- 
tion; the  former  will  report  within  a  reasonable 
time,  the  latter  within  six  months;  the  findings  will 
then  be  made  public  to  the  world;  three  long,  full 
months  will  pass  for  the  whole  human  family  to 
think  it  over;  and  then  any  nation,  if  it  has  the 
hardihood  to  do  so,  is  free  to  go  to  war,  except 
against  a  nation  heeding  the  award. 

To  go  back  to  the  Austro-Servian  crisis.  Any 
nation,  Austria,  Servia,  Great  Britain,  Argentina, 
the  United  States  might  have  brought  it  before  the 


The  League  in  1914  57 

Council  as  endangering  world  peace.  The  Secre- 
tary-General would  at  once  have  made  a  full  in- 
vestigation. Both  Austria  and  Servia  could  have 
submitted  statements  of  their  case,  with  facts  and 
figures  and  photographs  and  annexes  which  the 
Council  would  have  been  free  at  any  moment  to 
give  to  the  world. 

The  Council  would  have  tried  to  reach  an  agree- 
ment. If,  apart  from  the  interested  parties,  it 
had  reached  a  unanimous  decision,  it  would  have 
published  its  report  and  its  recommendations 
broadcast.  The  interested  parties  would  have 
been  under  no  obligation  to  accept;  the  extent  of 
their  agreement  would  have  been  to  wait  three 
months  before  declaring  war. 

But,  possibly  the  agreement  would  not  have 
been  unanimous.  Germany  as  the  ally  of  Austria 
might  have  stood  out  against  the  others.  In  that 
case  the  majority  or  indeed  any  member  of  the 
Council  would  have  been  free  to  issue  a  statement 
as  to  the  facts  and  the  conclusions.  This  might 
not  have  prevented  war,  but  it  at  least  would 
have  thrown  the  situation  into  bold  relief  before 
the  bar  of  world  conscience.  How  much  better 


58         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

this  would  have  been  than  the  blind  vagrant  way 
in  which  the  various  publics  blundered  into  hostil- 
ities in  1914. 

Any  dispute  may  be  referred  by  the  Council  to 
the  Assembly  or  taken  out  of  the  Council  into  the 
Assembly  at  the  request  of  either  party  two  weeks 
after  initiation.  This  in  a  measure  corresponds 
to  the  old  law  that  a  man  is  entitled  to  a  hearing 
before  his  peers,  for  in  the  Assembly  all  nations 
are  represented  as  political  sovereignties  and  even 
the  smallest  is  entitled  to  a  free  decision.  Hence 
if  Servia  had  feared  political  discrimination  in  the 
Council,  she  could  easily  have  moved  her  dispute 
up  into  a  meeting  of  all  world  states. 

Admittedly,  there  are  loopholes  in  this  plan. 
Anything  absolutely  water-tight  would  not  be  per- 
mitted. The  nations  have  pledged  themselves  as 
far  as  they  can  reasonably  be  expected  to  pledge 
themselves.  They  have  laid  certain  limits,  volun- 
tarily, on  their  previously  unrestricted  right  to 
make  war  in  recognition  of  their  common  respon- 
sibility to  maintain  world  peace.  War  is  still  per- 
missible, would  have  been  permissible  in  the  Aus- 


\ 


The  League  in  1914  59 

tro-Servian  crisis,  but  it  is  rendered  extremely  im- 
probable. 

There  still  remains  the  possibility  that  Austria 
would  have  elected  to  tear  the  Covenant  to  pieces, 
that  she  might  have  thought  her  hour  of  destiny 
had  sounded.  Against  that  sort  of  desperation, 
of  course,  no  human  precautions  can  be  absolutely 
certain.  Nevertheless,  the  strongest  possible  de- 
terrents have  been  provided.  If  Austria  had  vio- 
lated any  of  these  provisions,  she  would  ipso  facto 
have  committed  an  act  of  war  against  every  other 
member  in  the  League. 

The  immediate,  automatic  consequence  would 
have  been  the  severance  of  all  relations,  economic, 
financial  and  personal.  Very  doubtful  it  is  that 
she  would  have  flown  in  the  face  of  this  con- 
tingency, because  she  would  have  seen  herself  cut 
off,  with  one  sweep,  from  all  the  rest  of  civiliza- 
tion, except  perhaps  such  nations  as  she  had  se- 
duced to  follow  her  lead.  Few  states  indeed, 
could  afford  such  a  penalty  as  the  price  of  strik- 
ing quickly  in  war. 

Military  measures  would  also  have  loomed  in 


60        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

the  background.  The  moment  Austria  had 
broken  faith,  the  Council  of  the  League  would 
have  met  to  recommend  to  members  of  the  League 
what  forces,  if  any,  they  should  contribute  to  pro- 
tect the  covenants  of  the  League.  This  recom- 
mendation would  have  been  purely  a  recommenda- 
tion. It  would  have  had  no  binding  effect  on  any 
nation.  The  various  Parliaments  would  have 
taken  it  or  left  it  as  they  saw  fit. 

The  French  wanted  to  go  much  farther  than 
this.  They  wanted  an  international  staff,  possibly 
an  international  force,  to  be  always  ready  for 
such  emergencies.  It  was  President  Wilson,  it 
may  be  a  surprise  to  many  Americans  to  learn, 
who  said,  most  emphatically,  "  No."  He  pointed 
out  that  the  American  Constitution  makes  it  im- 
possible to  send  American  forces  overseas  with- 
out the  specific  consent  of  Congress  which  alone 
has  the  power  to  declare  war.  Nevertheless,  there 
can  be  but  little  doubt  that  if  any  nation  seeks  to 
run  riot  through  the  world,  powerful  military  and 
naval  forces  will  at  once  be  raised  to  bring  her 
back  to  her  proper  position  as  a  law-abiding, 
treaty-respecting  member  of  the  family  of  nations. 


The  League  in  1914  61 

Austria  might  in  1914  have  broken  through  all 
these  checks  to  war.  Or  she  might  have  com- 
plied with  the  requirements  and  still  have  made  a 
legal  war.  Force  will  not  for  a  long  time  be 
taken  out  of  international  affairs,  any  more  than 
force  is  taken  out  of  the  life  of  a  state,  as  is  so 
fully  recognized  by  the  unrestricted  right  of  revo- 
lution. But  the  League  affords  so  many  positive 
checks  and  so  many  ways  around  that  Sir  Edward 
Grey's  startling  statement  that  it  would  have  pre- 
vented the  World  War  is  not  overdrawn. 

At  the  present  moment,  France  cannot  go  to 
war  with  Italy,  Japan  with  England,  Peru  with 
Chile,  Holland  with  Belgium,  Sweden  with  Nor- 
way and  so  on  through  the  twoscore  nations  al- 
ready members  of  the  League,  without  submitting 
their  dispute  to  arbitration  or  conciliation,  and 
even  then  not  until  a  report  has  been  made  public 
to  the  world  and  three  months  have  elapsed  for 
world  opinion  to  function.  This  is  the  greatest 
fact  of  present-day  world  politics. 

In  this  chapter  I  have  described  only  the  polit- 
ical settlement  of  international  disputes.  In  the 
next  I  shall  describe  the  judicial  settlement 


62        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

through  the  Permanent  Court  of  International 
Justice  provided  in  Article  XIV  of  the  Covenant. 
By  many  this  latter  is  regarded  as  the  League's 
greatest  contribution  to  world  peace. 


THE  PERMANENT  COURT 

THE  first  important  act  of  the  League  of  Na- 
tions was  to  appoint  a  Commission  to  bring  into 
being  the  Permanent  Court  of  International 
Justice. 

This  is  indicative.  Such  a  Court  stands  closer 
to  the  hearts  of  the  nations  than  any  other  phase 
of  international  relations.  Yet  until  the  League 
was  born,  it  had  not  been  possible  to  create  it. 
The  Hague  had  tried,  and  tried  well,  but  never- 
theless had  failed.  It  required  the  havoc  of  war 
to  loosen  men's  minds  and  prejudices  sufficiently 
to  harmonize  the  conflicting  views. 

Approval  of  the  creation  of  the  Court  was 
practically  the  only  decision  arrived  at  by  the 
Peace  Conference  without  dispute  or  argument. 
Running  back  through  my  memory  and  finding  no 
lingering  details  of  the  circumstances  of  its  in- 
sertion in  the  Covenant,  I  asked  another  Ameri- 
can who  had  been  most  intimately  connected  with 
the  work : 

63 


64         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

'*  Why,  it  was  simply  proposed  and  adopted. 
That  was  all." 

"  But  was  there  no  argument?  " 

11  No,  every  one  agreed  to  it.  There  was  noth- 
ing to  argue  about.  To  tell  the  truth  it  went 
through  so  automatically  that  I  remember  very 
little  about  it." 

So  the  seeds  cast  to  the  four  winds  by  the 
Hague  Conference  bore  fruit  through  the  spirit 
of  cooperation  and  humility  engendered  by  four 
and  a  half  years  of  horror.  The  Court  which 
had  been  the  ideal  of  all  clear  thinkers  as  one 
of  the  best  methods  of  avoiding  war  gave  hopes 
of  becoming  a  reality.  That  it  was  made  item 
number  one  on  the  League  agenda  is  heartening 
to  those  who  urge  international  cooperation  as 
against  international  license;  and  by  the  same 
token  discouraging  to  those  who  see  in  the  League 
naught  but  Article  X,  politics  and  responsibilities. 

So  keen  was  the  world  interest  in  this  Court 
that  hardly  was  the  ink  dry  on  the  Covenant  than 
criticism  at  once  broke  out  because  its  details  had 
not  been  more  fully  amplified.  Article  XIV  was 
recognized  not  only  as  containing  one  of  the  most 


The  Permanent  Court  65 

hopeful  phases  of  League  work  but  also  as  con- 
taining one  of  the  least  developed.  If  other  pro- 
visions had  been  so  thoroughly  worked  out,  why, 
it  was  asked,  was  this  provision  relegated  to  a 
future  Commission?  The  Swiss  official  analysis 
said  that  "  one  of  the  great  omissions  of  the 
Covenant  is  that  it  does  not  organize  a  tribunal  " ; 
Mr.  Root  expressed  a  general  American  viewpoint 
when  he  proposed  a  reservation  greatly  amplify- 
ing this  line  of  usefulness;  even  the  official  com- 
mentary issued  by  none  other  than  the  League 
of  Nations  Commission  itself  said: 

"  The  Permanent  Court  of  International  Jus- 
tice is  essential  for  any  real  progress  in  interna- 
tional law.  As  things  now  stand,  the  political 
rather  than  the  judicial  aspect  of  the  settlement 
of  disputes  is  prominent  in  the  Covenant,  but 
1  political '  settlements  can  never  be  entirely  sat- 
isfactory or  just.  Ultimately  and  in  the  long 
run,  the  only  alternative  to  war  is  law,  and  for 
the  enthronement  of  law  there  is  required  such  a 
continuous  development  of  international  jurispru- 
dence, at  present  in  its  infancy,  as  can  only  be 
supplied  by  the  progressive  judgments  of  a  Per- 


66         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

manent  Court  working  out  its  own  traditions." 
No  time,  therefore,  was  lost  in  taking  the  first 
steps.  Indeed,  long  before  the  League  was  of- 
ficially in  being,  a  preliminary  list  of  jurists  had 
been  picked  out  and  a  letter  prepared  ready  for 
approval  at  the  earliest  possible  moment.  So, 
when  the  Council  met  in  London  on  February  13, 
for  what  was  practically  its  first  business  meeting, 
the  first  item  on  the  agenda  was  the  launching  of 
the  Court. 

To  Leon  Bourgeois,  former  Premier  of 
France  and  a  moving  spirit  through  the  early 
Hague  days,  fell  the  honor  of  presenting  these 
plans  at  a  public  session  of  the  Council.  "  If 
justice  is  to  reign,"  he  said,  "  it  must  have  a  per- 
manent instrument  to  its  hand;  it  must  take  some 
tangible  form  which  will  make  its  existence  felt 
among  the  peoples  and  give  the  support  of  its 
powerful,  impartial  and  supreme  authority  to 
those  whose  weakness  is  only  too  often  unde- 
fended. .  .  .  From  all  parts  of  the  devastated 
and  tormented  world  rises  a  cry  for  justice.  The 
military  and  moral  unity  which  for  five  years  has 
held  the  free  peoples  together  and  concentrated 


The  Permanent  Court  67 

their  efforts  in  the  defense  of  right  must  survive 
with  our  victory;  it  can  find  no  nobler  expression 
nor  more  splendid  symbol  than  the  establishment 
of  a  Permanent  Court  of  International  Justice." 

An  Organizing  Commission  was  then  named 
which  justified  the  highest  hopes.  It  was  com- 
posed of  admittedly  the  greatest  jurists  in  the 
world,  representing  both  the  several  great 
branches  of  the  human  family  and  the  various 
traditions  in  international  law,  Akidzuki  of  Japan, 
Altamira  of  Spain,  Bevilaqua  of  Brazil,  Descamps 
of  Belgium,  Drago  of  the  Argentine,  Fadda  of 
Italy,  Fromageot  of  France,  Gram  of  Norway, 
Loder  of  Holland,  Phillimore  of  Great  Britain, 
Vesnitch  of  Jugo-Slavia,  and  Root  of  the  United 
States. 

Regarding  Mr.  Root,  Mr.  Balfour  said:  "It 
may  be  that  Mr.  Root  for  one  reason  or  another 
will  not  find  it  possible  immediately  to  accept,  but 
the  Council  desire  formally  to  put  on  record  that 
Mr.  Root  will  always  be  welcome  at  whatever 
stage  of  our  proceedings  he  feels  it  within  his 
power  to  add  to  our  deliberations  the  great  weight 
of  his  learning  and  his  name."  It  will  ever  be 


68         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

a  source  of  gratitude  to  those  connected  with  the 
League  organization  work  that  Mr.  Root  proved 
himself  above  the  political  struggle  then  wracking 
his  own  country,  and  not  only  accepted  the  invi- 
tation at  once,  but  accepted  it  in  the  biggest  and 
broadest  possible  spirit. 

.Announcement  was  therefore  made  at  the  Rome 
meeting  of  the  -Council  on  May  19  that  all  of 
the  jurists  invited  to  serve  had  accepted  except 
Mr.  Akidzuki,  who  had  asked  to  be  replaced  by 
Mr.  Adatci,  and  Mr.  Gram  and  Senor  Drago, 
both  of  whom  asked  to  be  excused  because  of 
health  and  age.  The  Committee  convened  in 
London  in  mid- June,  where  it  found  before  it  all 
the  pertinent  documents  collected  by  the  expert 
secretariat  of  the  Court. 

This  Commission  has  an  enormous  task  before 
it.  It  is  not  so  much  the  task  of  plowing  a  vir- 
gin field  as  of  finding  its  way  through  the  immense 
mass  of  material  submitted.  Unlike  the  princi- 
ple of  the  political  settlement  of  international  dis- 
putes, that  of  judicial  settlement  is  rich  in  history 
and  tradition.  Much  was  done  at  The  Hague; 
much  also  in  independent  negotiations  between  the 


The  Permanent  Court  69 

states ;  but  still  more  has  been  opened  up  under  the 
stimulus  of  the  Covenant. 

For,  immediately  the  Covenant  was  adopted, 
the  nations  outside  the  Peace  Conference  broke  in 
on  the  discussion.  The  German  counter-pro- 
posals went  into  great  detail  in  their  plans  for 
a  Court.  The  Austrians  submitted  a  long  mem- 
orandum by  Professor  Lammasch,  who  had  stood 
high  in  this  work  in  the  past.  The  Swiss  pre- 
sented the  Conference  of  Neutrals  at  Paris  with 
their  elaborate  plan.  Norway,  Sweden  and  Den- 
mark named  a  joint  Scandinavian  Committee 
which  submitted  proposals  to  the  League  long 
before  the  League  was  officially  in  being.  The 
Dutch  offered  the  plan  of  their  official  League  of 
Nations  Commission  and  in  February  brought 
about  at  The  Hague  a  conference  of  the  five  small 
European  neutrals  who  agreed  on  an  identical  con- 
stitution for  the  Court. 

Unofficial  bodies  have  also  cooperated.  The 
Inter-Parliamentary  Union  has  submitted  a  plan; 
the  Conference  of  the  League  of  Nations  Union 
at  Brussels  passed  rigorous  resolutions  calling  on 
the  governments  for  immediate  action.  Indeed, 


70         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

public  opinion  in  all  countries  has  been  stimulated 
more  by  this  opening  towards  peace  than  by  any 
other.  The  Permanent  Court  fell  upon  ground 
made  fertile  by  years  of  effort  and  not  exhausted 
by  the  bitter  opposition  to  which  other  phases  of 
League  activity  have  been  submitted. 

Read  what  Mr.  Root,  American  member  on  the 
Organizing  Committee,  said  of  such  a  Court  in  his 
instructions  as  Secretary  of  State  to  the  American 
delegates  to  the  second  Hague  Conference  in  1907. 
No  one  ever  summarized  the  possibilities  and  the 
difficulties  of  judicial  settlement  of  international 
disputes  more  effectively  or  ever  gave  a  greater 
stimulus  toward  its  establishment  than  when,  in 
those  days  of  extreme  state  pride  and  general  sus- 
picion of  cooperation,  he  said: 

4  The  principal  objection  to  arbitration  rests 
lot  upon  the  unwillingness  of  nations  to  submit 
their  controversies  to  impartial  arbitration,  but 
upon  an  appreciation  that  the  arbitration  to  which 
they  submit  may  not  be  impartial.  It  has  been  a 
general  practice  for  arbitrators  to  act,  not  as 
judges  deciding  questions  of  facts  and  law  upon 
the  record  before  them  under  a  sense  of  judicial 


The  Permanent  Court  71 

responsibility,  but  as  negotiators  effecting  settle- 
ments in  accordance  with  the  traditions  and  usages 
which  affect  diplomatic  agents.  It  very  frequently 
happens  that  a  nation  that  would  be  willing  to 
submit  its  differences  to  an  impartial  judicial  deter- 
mination is  unwilling  to  submit  them  to  this  kind 
of  diplomatic  process.  If  there  could  be  a  tri- 
bunal which  could  pass  upon  questions  between 
nations  with  the  same  impartial  and  impersonal 
judgment  that  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  gives  to  questions  arising  between  citizens 
of  different  states,  there  could  be  no  doubt  but 
that  nations  would  be  much  more  ready  to  submit 
their  controversies  to  its  decisions  than  they  are 
now  to  take  the  chances  of  arbitration.  It  should1 
be  your  effort  to  bring  about  in  the  Second  Con- 
ference a  development  of  the  Hague  Tribunal  into 
a  permanent  tribunal  composed  of  judges  who  are; 
judicial  officers  and  nothing  else,  who  are  paid 
adequate  salaries,  who  have  no  other  occupations 
and  who  will  devote  their  entire  time  to  the  trial 
and  decision  of  international  causes  by  judicial 
methods,  and  under  a  sense  of  judicial  responsi- 
bility." 


72         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Such  is  the  object.  Let  no  one  think,  however, 
that  it  is  simple  of  attainment.  Several  pitfalls 
lurk  along  the  roadside;  pitfalls  which  proved 
fully  sufficient  to  wreck  the  Hague  plans.  But  the 
nations  now  approach  them  with  a  greater  humil- 
ity and  a  lessened  pride.  They  have  learned  to 
cooperate  in  the  supreme  crisis  of  the  war;  they 
have  found  that  united  action  does  not  mean  sur- 
render of  sovereignty;  they  are  willing  to  make 
sacrifices  of  purely  national  egotism  to  avoid  an- 
other world  conflagration. 

.  — - 

Most  important,  indeed  fundamental,  is  the 
method  of  the  appointment  of  the  permanent 
judges.  Obviously  the  Court  will  be  useless  if  the 
nations  do  not  have  confidence  in  its  personnel. 
They  must  all  have  a  voice  in  the  selection,  be 
assured  that  the  men  chosen  will  be  as  nearly  im- 
partial as  is  humanly  possible,  and  be  guaranteed 
against  the  sitting  of  any  judge  who  might  be, 
even  unconsciously,  prejudiced.  / 

It  was  on  this  rock  that  the  Hague  Court  split 
to  pieces.  The  nations  could  agree  on  the  pro- 
cedure, the  details  of  submission,  indeed  all  else 
involved,  but  they  could  not  agree  on  the  great 


The  Permanent  Court  73 

human  problem  of  what  men  were  actually  going 
to  be  entrusted  with  making  the  decisions.  The 
little  states,  proud  in  their  sovereignty,  stood 
out  for  a  full  equality  of  selection  with  the 
big  Powers,  and  the  big  Powers  refused  to  allow 
their  preponderant  strength  to  be  overlooked  or 
to  entrust  their  fate  to  men  chosen  largely  by  the 
small  Powers.  So  they  had  to  announce  the 
Court  without  announcing  the  judges  —  a  skele- 
ton. 

Now  the  many  plans  submitted  to  the  Commis- 
sion provide  the  most  ingenious  ways  around  this 
difficulty.  Without  analyzing  them  in  detail,  the 
high  points  running  through  them  follow  some- 
what this  course.  First  the  men  shall  be  chosen 
not  for  their  nationality  but  for  their  eminence  in 
international  law.  This  may  seem  impossible  in 
the  present  hodgepodge  relationship  of  states,  but 
suggestions  have  been  made  which  seem  nearly 
water-tight  against  any  nation  packing  the  court, 
while  at  the  same  time  assuring  both  the  choice  of 
the  most  eminent  jurists  and  also  a  proportional 
division  among  the  bigger  units  in  the  family  of 
nations. 


74        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

The  Swiss,  for  instance,  and  the  Germans  also, 
propose  that  each  state  shall  name,  say,  four  emi- 
nent jurists,  of  whom  one  shall  be  a  foreigner. 
This  will  make  a  large  panel.  From  that  panel 
each  state  will  then  name  its  first  fifteen  choices, 
and  the  fifteen  men  securing  the  highest  number  of 
votes  shall  be  considered  elected/  Obviously  only 
the  best  known  men  can  run  this  gauntlet  and  the 
best  known  men  are  usually  found  in  the  big 
countries.  At  the  same  time,  however,  the  small 
countries  have  a  somewhat  disproportionate  vot- 
ing power  and  can  unite  to  secure  an  appreciable 
representation.  A  South  American  member,  for 
instance,  is  practically  assured,  as  is  also  one  for 
the  Northern  European  neutrals,  while  it  is  pos- 
sible the  five  great  Powers  will  insist  on  perma- 
nent representatives. 

When  a  case  comes  before  the  Court,  a  varying 
number  of  judges  may  sit  according  to  the  differ- 
ent plans  submitted.  Most  all,  however,  debar 
any  national  from  sitting  in  a  case  in  which  his 
own  state  is  involved,  and  at  the  same  time  give 
either  party  to  the  dispute  the  right  of  challenge 
of  at  least  several  of  the  judges  first  selected. 


The  Permanent  Court  75 

Some  of  the  plans  go  even  farther  to  remove 
nationalistic  influences  from  the  Court,  as  in  the 
Austrian  plan,  where  it  is  provided  that  not  more 
than  one  national  from  any  state  may  be  selected. 

How  far  are  the  decisions  arrived  at  to  be  bind- 
ing? "  The  members  agree  that  they  will  carry 
out  in  good  faith  any  award  that  may  be  ren- 
dered," the  Covenant  says,  and  that  "  in  the  event 
of  any  failure  to  carry  out  such  an  award,  the 
Council  shall  propose  what  steps  should  be  taken 
to  give  effect  thereto."  In  other  words  no  nation 
could  repudiate  a  finding  of  the  Permanent  Court 
without  repudiating  its  own  national  honor  and 
good  faith,  and  at  the  same  time  laying  itself  open 
to  a  possibility  of  coercion  by  the  other  states. 
That  is  a  powerful  drawback,  even  though,  as  Gen- 
eral Smuts  says,  "  the  award  of  such  tribunals  has 
in  almost  all  cases  been  carried  out  by  the  states 
against  whom  the  decision  was  given." 

The  Scandinavian  plan  would  admit  of  no  ap- 
peal unless  a  wholly  new  fact  could  be  established. 
The  Austrian  plan  would  not  only  consider  such 
decisions  as  final,  but  would  obligate  the  League 
members  to  enforce  them  against  any  recalcitrant 


76         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

state.  While  it  is  not  probable  that  a  definite  ob- 
ligation for  enforcement  will  be  adopted,  opinion 
is  unanimous  that  there  will  not  only  be  the 
strongest  opprobrium  behind  any  repudiation  of  a 
Court  finding  but  also  the  very  real  threat  of 
positive  action  by  other  League  members. 

Then  again,  what  system  of  law  is  to  be  ap- 
plied? For  the  different  legal  systems  among 
the  larger  units  of  the  family  of  nations  vary 
widely  one  from  another.  Anglo-Saxon  law  is 
quite  different  from  Continental  or  Napoleonic 
law,  and  Napoleonic  law  in  turn  quite  different 
from  Slavic  law.  Nevertheless,  a  very  appre- 
ciable body  of  precedent  has  been  built  up  in  the 
years  of  quiet  development  of  international  law. 

Most  vital  of  all  perhaps  is  the  question  of  in- 
terpretation of  the  Covenant.  This  will  un- 
doubtedly rest  with  the  Permanent  Court.  In 
this  matter  a  worthy  precedent  is  at  hand.  As  the 
first  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  amounted  practically  to  an  elucidation  of 
the  Constitution,  so  the  first  decisions  of  the  Per- 
manent Court  will  amount  to  the  laying  of  the 


The  Permanent  Court  77 

groundwork  of  international  law  upon  which  the,1 
Covenant  will  rest. 

But  undoubtedly  the  Organizing  Committee 
will  recommend  that  as  much  as  possible  of  this 
confusion  be  cleared  away  by  common  agreement 
among  the  states  before  a  specific  case  shall  arise 
to  add  a  new  complication.  Therefore,  it  is  to 
be  expected  that  definite  plans  will  be  announced 
for  restatements  of  international  law,  especially 
as  the  World  War  so  shot  to  pieces  what  general 
understandings  the  world  had  arrived  at.  The 
great  movement  that  is  now  astir  throughout  the 
world  to  reconstitute  these  shattered  principles 
will  undoubtedly  find  response. 

All  this  must  if  possible  be  decided  in  the  weeks 
before  the  first  assembly  of  the  League.  The 
Organizing  Committee  set  to  work  in  June  to  an- 
alyze all  the  plans  submitted  and  will  submit  its 
finally  worked  out  draft  first  to  the  Council  and 
then  as  the  final  step  to  the  Assembly  of  all  states 
in  November.  At  that  moment  would  come  into 
being,  as  the  second  part  of  the  scheme  for  the 
peaceful  settlement  of  international  disputes,  the 


78         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Permanent  Court  of  International  Justice,  com- 
posed of  jurists  beyond  the  charge  of  favoritism, 
representative  of  the  wider  currents  in  world  life, 
supported  by  a  world  sense  of  justice  and  a  possi- 
bility of  force,  equipped  to  render  a  just  decision 
on  any  question  of  fact  or  law,  evolving  out  of 
their  experience  a  common  code  of  the  nations  — 
in  short  the  great,  impartial,  international  Court 
which  men  have  sought  for  generations  as  the  best 
method  of  settling  disputes  between  nations. 


THE  SECRETARIAT 

AMERICANS  would  be  most  intensely  interested 
if  they  could  visit  for  a  few  hours  two*  large  com- 
fortable buildings  in  London  where  one  of  the 
most  novel  innovations  attempted  by  the  League 
of  Nations  is  temporarily  located.  They  would 
find  there  a  group  of  men  from  many  countries, 
French  and  Brazilians,  Americans  and  Dutch, 
Japs  and  Norwegians,  British  and  Swiss,  all  work- 
ing together  and  somehow  getting  along  together 
in  one  small  compact  organization;  rubbing  el- 
bows every  hour,  and  harmonizing  ideas,  ideals 
and  standards  as  variegated  as  those  of  the  forty 
different  states  in  the  family  of  nations. 

They  would  find,  in  short,  the  machinery  of 
the  League,  the  international  organization  which 
aims  to  be  as  impartial  and  as  trustworthy  as 
this  imperfect  world  of  ours  allows,  and  which 
has  already  become  the  central  administrative 
nerve  center  for  the  widely  different  phases  of 
League  activity.  They  would  find  the  organiza- 

79 


8o         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

tion  which  has  so  far  done  all  the  preliminary 
spade  work,  as  it  were,  which  has  prepared  the 
data  for  the  Council  meetings  already  held,  and 
which  will  be  the  permanent  expert  non-partisan 
core  of  League  activities. 

Such  a  thing  never  has  been  attempted  before. 
It  is  called  the  Secretariat.  Even  its  name,  I  im- 
agine, will  ring  a  little  queer  to  most  Americans. 
Few  of  us  can  recall  ever  having  encountered  any 
such  institution,  yet  we  of  all  people  should  un- 
derstand it,  as  we  of  all  people  understand  the 
mechanism  of  politics.  And  the  spirit  which  un- 
derlies it  is  a  spirit  which  cannot  but  appeal  to  us, 
for  unless  that  spirit  develops  into  full  fruition, 
one  of  the  greatest  hopes  of  effective  international 
cooperation  must  be  abandoned. 

This  spirit  may  be  seen  in  an  illustration  which 
in  itself  perhaps  is  unimportant.  No  member  of 
the  Secretariat  may  accept  honors  or  decorations 
from  any  government.  They  must  be  as  truly 
;  free  from  such  influences  as  possible.  "  They 
act,"  says  one  of  its  memoranda,  u  in  an  inter- 
national capacity  and  are  not  in  any  way  repre- 
sentatives of  their  own  country."  Consequently 


The  Secretariat  81 

they  must  be  impartial.  The  Secretariat  would 
utterly  fail  if  it  were  shot  through  with  national 
cliques  and  intrigues.  An  international  body  con- 
taining men  from  all  nations,  it  is  responsible,  not 
to  any  one  nation,  but  to  the  Assembly  or  Council 
representing  all  nations. 

The  Secretariat  is  not  the  place  for  political  ac- 
tivity. Two  bodies  have  been  constituted  for  that 
purpose,  the  Assembly  and  the  Council.  Before 
them  each  nation  has  its  individual  delegation, 
whose  sole  task  is  to  be  the  spokesman  of  the 
national  viewpoint.  In  both  these  bodies  the 
clash  of  political  opinion  will  take  place  and  the 
differences  in  policies  be  harmonized.  What 
above  all  else  both  the  Assembly  and  the  Coun- 
cil need  is  a  permanent  skilled  body  upon  which  it 
can  rely  to  provide  the  necessary  facts  and  do  the 
necessary  secretarial  work. 

This  is  a  very  new  principle.  It  sends  cold 
shivers  down  the  backs  of  the  old  diplomacy  which 
made  something  of  a  business  of  keeping  the  na- 
tions of  the  world  apart,  and  raises  wholly  un- 
necessary fears  among  intense  nationalists  who 
believe  that  any  attempt  at  international  cooper- 


82         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

ation  may  weaken  the  spirit  of  provincialism. 
Both  views  are  exaggerated.  The  Secretariat 
will  be  a  vitally  important  part  of  the  League  of 
Nations,  but  it  will  not  in  any  sense  be  the  domi- 
nating part. 

In  all  political  action  three  processes  are  nec- 
essary; first  to  collect  the  facts,  second  to  form 
the  judgment  from  those  facts,  and  third  to  see 
to  the  execution  of  that  judgment.  The  middle 
of  these  three  functions,  so  far  as  the  League  is 
concerned,  is  cared  for  by  either  the  Assembly  or 
the  Council.  Neither  of  them,  however,  is 
equipped  to  handle  the  detail  work  required  in  the 
other  two.  They  are  too  spasmodic  in  meeting, 
too  temporary  in  personnel,  too  partial  in  com- 
position. 

So  we  have  the  Secretariat.  Such  a  body  is 
foreseen  in  every  League  of  Nations  plan.  Even 
the  Germans  provided  for  a  "  chancery "  to 
"  form  the  common  bureau  of  the  official  bodies 
of  the  League."  The  Secretariat  becomes  by 
universal  consent  the  permanent  staff  of  the 
League,  keeping  things  going,  oiling  and  greasing 
the  wheels,  investigating,  analyzing,  planning  and 


The  Secretariat  83 

reporting.     It  is  the  agency  through  which  the  de-  * 
liberative  bodies  such  as  the  Assembly,  the  Coun- 
cil, the  Court,  the  Health  Office  will  work,  the  ; 
trained  civil  service,  if  you  will. 

Theoretically,  of  course,  it  has  no  power  of  \ 
initiative.  Its  task  is  to  do  what  it  is  told  by 
the  deliberative  bodies  to  do,  especially  to  carry 
on  the  relations  between  the  various  nations  and 
the  League  and  to  coordinate  the  various  activi- 
ties. Actually,  however,  it  will  have  very  con- 
siderable power,  all  the  power  indeed  which  is 
usually  attracted  to  a  body  preparing  information 
and  recommendations.  If  the  spirit  behind  it  is 
permitted  to  develop,  the  League's  chances  for 
success  are  great;  if  not,  they  are  seriously  threat- 
ened. 

Curiously  enough,  the  Secretariat  has  been  in 
existence  and  at  work  for  nearly  a  year  without 
the  world  sensing  the  importance  of  what  it  was 
attempting.  The  work  of  organization  began 
even  before  Germany  signed  the  Peace  Treaty. 
It  had  to,  indeed,  for  the  Treaty  quite  mercilessly 
thrust  many  duties  on  the  League  the  moment  it 
officially  came  into  existence.  An  agency  had  to 


84        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

be  created  to  be  fully  functioning  when  the  Peace 
finally  arrived. 

The  job  was  no  simple  one.  It  fell  to  Sir  Eric 
Drummond,  who  was  selected  as  the  first  Secre- 
tary-General by  the  Plenary  Conference  of  April 
28  when  final  approval  was  given  the  Covenant. 
Drummond  probably  knows  as  much  of  the  inside 
of  world  diplomacy  of  the  past  two  decades  as  any 
[man  living.  He  has  been  chief  assistant  to  Great 
Britain's  leading  foreign  statesmen,  one  after  the 
other,  having  been  private  secretary  to  Premier 
Asquith  from  1912  to  1915,  then  to  Sir  Edward 
Grey  till  1916,  and  finally  to  Foreign  Secretary 
Balfour,  with  whom  he  came  to  the  United  States 
a  few  weeks  after  we  entered  the  war.  He  is 
a  man  of  attractive  personality,  a  hard  worker, 
and,  above  all,  well  poised. 

On  the  fifth  of  last  May,  he  was  told  by  the 
Organizing  Committee  to  go  ahead.  He  picked 
out  a  few  men,  accepted  the  offer  of  Sunderland 
House  in  London  as  temporary  headquarters,  and 
moved  across  the  Channel  in  June,  as  much  as  any- 
thing to  be  away  from  the  atmosphere  of  Paris. 
But  the  job  was  a  hard  one.  There  was  too  much 


The  Secretariat  85 

unreality  about  it.  The  early  days  were  days 
of  hope,  faith,  and,  above  all,  waiting.  Every 
one  felt  attached  to  something  which  did  not  ex- 
ist, dangling  as  it  were  in  midair.  They  argued, 
planned,  drew  memoranda,  but  in  the  busiest 
moments  the  thought  suddenly  came  that  perhaps 
after  all  the  League  would  never  eventuate. 
It  seemed  like  building  houses  of  cards. 

Nevertheless,  the  work  is  now  well  outlined. 
A  personnel  has  been  brought  together,  a  scheme 
of  organization  worked  out,  and  plans  for  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  League  drawn  up.  Already  many 
of  them  have  been  placed  before  the  Council  for 
endorsement,  as  for  instance  the  plans  for  the 
Permanent  Court  of  Justice  and  the  International 
Health  Organization.  This  does  not  mean  that 
in  each  field  a  final  and  conclusive  program  has 
been  drawn  up;  quite  on  the  contrary  only  the 
next  immediate  step  has  been  suggested,  on  the 
principle  that  it  is  "  better  to  leave  the  hands  of 
the  statesmen  of  the  future  as  free  as  possible  and 
to  allow  the  League  as  a  living  organism  to  dis- 
cover its  own  best  lines  of  development." 

Something  over  TOO  people  are  now  included  in  ' 


86        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

the  Secretariat,  drawn  from  a  score  of  nations. 
All  appointments  have  been  made  on  the  basis  of 
experience  either  during  the  war  or  at  the  Peace 
Conference  in  similar  international  work.  They 
are  purely  provisional,  and  subject  to  approval  of 
the  Council.  While,  therefore,  the  Secretary- 
General  is  given  certain  latitude  in  his  choice  of 
men,  as  is  wholly  essential  if  the  Secretariat  is  to 
function  properly,  he  is  at  the  same  time  sub- 
mitted to  the  check  of  the  Council  against  any  pos- 
sibly objectionable  choices. 

Several  Americans  are  included  in  this  provi- 
sional list.  They  were  all  asked  to  serve  last 
spring,  at  the  time  Germany  signed  the  Peace 
Treaty,  and  when  no  one  contemplated  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  Senate's  refusal  to  ratify  the 
Treaty.  It  should  be  most  emphatically  under- 
stood that  they  serve  solely  as  individuals  and  not 
in  any  sense  as  representatives  of  the  United 
States.  They  have  been  picked  out  as  experts  in 
particular  lines,  without  any  thought  of  their  re- 
lationship to  their  own  country,  as  must  be  the 
case  with  the  whole  Secretariat  system. 

The  Secretariat  is  divided  into  sections  follow- 


The  Secretariat  87 

ing  the  division  of  its  work,  and  is  headed  by  a  « 
sort  of  general  conference  or  board  consisting  of  ! 
the  Secretary-General,  the  four  Under-Secretaries-  \ 
General,    and   the    Directors    of   Sections.     The  • 
Under-Secretaries  are  divided  among  the  others 
of  the  five  big  Powers,  including  Jean  Monnet, 
formerly  French  representative  on  the  Supreme 
Economic    Council;    Inatzo    Nitobe,    well-known 
Japanese  publicist,  and  Signor  Anzillotti,  an  Ital- 
ian.    Raymond    B.    Fosdick    served    for    some 
months  until  the  embarrassment  of  America's  con- 
tinued delay  and  the  possibility  of  misunderstand- 
ing as  to  his  position  led  him  to  resign. 

Of  the  various  sections,  the  Political  is  headed 
by  M.  Mantoux,  who,  as  interpreter  of  the  Coun- 
cils of  Ten  and  of  Four,  is  familiar  with  every 
detail  of  the  Paris  Peace  Conference.  The 
Legal  Section,  which  will  aid  in  the  revision  of 
international  law,  is  headed  by  Dr.  Joost  van 
Hamel,  a  leading  Dutch  jurist  and  author,  assisted 
by  Manley  O.  Hudson,  formerly  legal  expert  on 
the  American  Peace  Commission;  J.  Pawley  Bate 
of  Great  Britain,  and  Mr.  Kaeckenbeeck  of  Hol- 
land. 


88        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

The  Section  on  Public  Information,  which  pub- 
lishes the  Official  Journal  and  the  other  statements 
of  the  League,  is  headed  by  Pierre  Comert,  for- 
merly editor  of  the  Paris  Temps,  assisted  by 
George  Mair,  formerly  director  of  the  British 
Press  Bureau  at  Paris,  and  the  author  of  this 
little  book.  The  Economic  Section,  which  will 
take  over  what  remains  of  the  war's  economic  co- 
operation and  draw  up  plans  for  the  enforcement 
of  any  economic  boycott  which  may  be  voted,  is 
headed  by  J.  A.  Salter,  formerly  secretary  of  the 
Allied  Maritime  Council.  The  finances  of  the 
League  itself  are  in  the  hands  of  Sir  Herbert 
Ames,  a  member  of  the  Canadian  Parliament. 

The  Section  on  Mandates  for  backward  coun- 
tries was  entrusted  to  George  Louis  Beer,  who 
represented  the  United  States  in  colonial  matters 
at  the  Peace  Conference,  but  who  was  claimed  by 
death  in  the  spring  of  1920.  The  Section  on 
Transit,  which  is  to  work  out  conventions  for  the 
unhampered  use  of  International  ports,  water- 
ways and  railways  in  Europe,  is  headed  by  Pro- 
fessor Attolico  of  Italy.  The  many  existing  inter- 
national bureaus  which  it  is  hoped  to  bring  into 


The  Secretariat  89 

close  cooperation  with  the  League  are  looked  after 
by  Dr.  Inatzo  Nitobe  of  Japari,  and  the  many 
administrative  commissions  formed  under  the 
Peace  Treaty  by  Erik  Colban,  formerly  of  the 
Norwegian  Foreign  Office.  Liaison  with  the  In- 
ternational Labor  Office  will  be  maintained  by 
Dr.  Louis  Varlez  of  Belgium,  general  secretary 
of  the  International  Association  of  Unemploy- 
ment. Miss  M.  F.  Wilson  of  the  United  States 
has  been  chosen  acting  librarian  and  perhaps  a 
South  American  will  be  chosen  registrar-general 
of  treaties. 

Such  is  the  general  outline.  The  list  of  course 
is  not  complete.  It  illustrates,  nevertheless,  the 
scheme  both  of  organization  and  of  international 
personnel.  Its  principle  will  be  fought  and 
fought  bitterly.  Attempts  will  be  made  to  infuse 
differences  amidst  these  different  elements  and  to 
bias  action  along  purely  national  grounds.  If 
these  efforts  succeed,  the  Assembly  and  the  Coun- 
cil of  the  League  will  be  left  without  any  organi- 
zation in  which  they  can  impose  confidence. 

Undoubtedly,  if  the  Peace  Conference  in  Paris 
had  had  such  a  Secretariat,  its  labors  would  have 


90        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

been  greatly  simplified.  One  reason  that  it  blun- 
dered along  fruitlessly  for  so  long  was  that  it 
had  no  adequate  mechanism.  Great  diplomats, 
as  fussy  for  all  the  world  as  prima  donnas,  came 
together  unprepared  and  uncoordinated.  Mr. 
Wilson  had  his  shoals  and  shoals  of  experts;  Mr. 
Lloyd  George,  Mr.  Paderewski,  Mr.  Vesnitch, 
Mr.  delegate  from  Siam  likewise,  but  all  of  them 
had  a  particular  idea  which  they  wanted  to  impose 
and  could  not  be  relied  upon  for  an  impartial 
amplification  of  a  policy  decided  upon  by  the  polit- 
ical chieftains.  There  was  no  adequate  clearing 
house  of  secretarial  work. 

This  great  lack  the  League  has  already  met. 
It  has  initiated  a  new  principle  in  international 
relations.  The  change  is  well  summarized  in  an 
official  commentary  on  the  League  issued  last 
spring  in  Paris  which  said  the  Secretariat  "  has 
immense  possibilities  of  usefulness.  A  reliable 
supply  of  facts  and  statistics  will  in  itself  be  a 
powerful  aid  to  peace.  Nor  can  the  value  be  ex- 
aggerated of  the  continuous  collaboration  of  ex- 
perts in  matters  tending  to  emphasize  the  unity 
rather  than  the  diversity  of  national  interests." 


The  Secretariat  91 

The  League  has  started  well  on  this  line. 
That  does  not  mean  that  the  details  are  perfect; 
that  all  the  personnel  is  free  from  criticism,  or 
that  great  opportunity  for  trouble  does  not  exist. 
It  does  mean,  however,  that  a  very  good  begin- 
ning, perhaps  a  surprisingly  good  beginning,  has 
been  made  towards  creating  this  most  new  and  un- 
precedented body.  What  is  now  needed  is  public 
understanding  and  support  to  allow  it  to  develop 
freely  into  its  full  promise  as  one  of  the  instru- 
ments for  bringing  into  being  a  better  interna- 
tional relationship. 


DISARMAMENT 

THE  most  difficult,  perhaps  the  most  impor- 
tant and  certainly  the  least  advanced  question  be- 
fore the  League  of  Nations  is  reduction  of  arma- 
ments. 

'  The  actual  number  of  men  under  arms  today 
is  much  greater  than  in  1914,"  says  Herbert 
Hoover.  "  The  world's  total  armaments  and  the 
military  expenditures  are  greater,  despite  the  bur- 
den of  grinding  debt." 

There  is  no  use  in  blinking  these  facts.  States 
which  are  ready  to  be  liberal  in  other  matters  balk 
before  any  plan  to  weaken  their  power  of  self- 
defense.  In  a  world  torn  and  tortured  as  is  the 
present  world,  with  uncertainty  on  all  sides,  with 
the  wounds  of  war  still  raw,  with  every  funda- 
mental force  of  Nature  set  loose  into  free  play, 
suspicion  and  distrust  have  become  rampant. 

Pitifully  enough  the  dreams  which  alone  made 
it  possible  to  endure  the  horrors  of  war  have  not 
come  true.  We  have  not  come  to  rest  in  the 
haven  of  perpetual  peace;  we  have  not  overcome 

92 


f 


Disarmament  93 

the  greeds  and  passions  which  gnaw  into  the  vitals 
of  friendly  relations  between  states;  we  have  not 
found  the  millennium.  We  may  indeed  be  better 
off  than  in  1914,  for  at  least  autocracy  has  gone 
forever  from  those  vast  territories  which  the  Hoh- 
enzollerns,  Hapsburgs  and  Romanoffs  formerly 
ruled,  but  we  have  taken  merely  one  step  forward 
instead  of  making  the  whole  trip. 

Yet  the  face  of  the  world  has  changed  mightily. 
A  whole  new  alignment  of  forces  greets  any  study 
today  of  the  armaments  problem.  The  issues  of 
1914  have  been  swept  aside  and  wholly  new  ones 
created.  Those  new  issues  give  us  the  right  to 
hope  that  reduction  of  armaments  may  be  ac- 
complished, much  as  medicine  is  sometimes  taken 
before  the  patient  is  aware  of  it. 

First,  the  world  is  bankrupt.  Of  all  the  proud 
nations  in  the  race  in  1914,  only  the  United  States, 
and  possibly  Japan,  can  afford  the  pace.  The 
others  are  smothered  in  debt.  Long  before  they 
can  build  dreadnaughts  and  Big  Berthas,  they 
must  pay  vast  pension  rolls  and  redeem  huge  for- 
eign loans.  The  war  cost  the  world  two  hundred 
billions  of  dollars. 


94         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Second,  militarism  itself  is  bankrupt.  The 
man  in  the  street  understands  as  he  never  has  be- 
fore that  behind  the  beautiful  figure  of  a  battle- 
ship or  the  trim  appearance  of  a  field  gun  is  a 
whole  professional  soldiery,  armaments  industry, 
and  yellow  press  which  would  starve  but  for  war 
and  fear  of  war.  People  realize  that  if  heavy 
armaments  contain  certain  elements  of  protection, 
they  also  contain  negativing  elements  of  danger. 

Third,  the  greatest  militarism  of  all,  the 
"  shining  armor  "  of  Germany,  lies  in  the  dust, 
not  only  defeated  but  disgraced.  Her  Kaiser 
has  fallen  from  giddy  heights  to  a  position  beneath 
contempt;  her  army  is  ordered  reduced  to 
200,000  men;  her  fleet  sunk  or  put  on  exhibition 
as  prize.  The  adventurous  Kapp,  in  his  mad  ex- 
ploit to  restore  the  old  regime,  could  not  secure 
enough  support,  despite  the  army  at  his  back,  to 
cling  to  office  for  a  week. 

Fourth,  a  great  irregular  swathe  is  to  be  demili- 
tarized straight  through  the  heart  of  Europe, 
Germany,  Austria,  Hungary,  Bulgaria  and  Tur- 
key. This  will  form  a  wide  corridor  from  the 
North  Sea  to  the  Black  Sea  wherein  should  be 


Disarmament  95 

found  no  armies,  no  big  guns,  no  plotting  General 
Staffs.  What  for  generations  has  been  the 
world's  powder  magazine  will  henceforth  be  pac- 
ified, if  the  Allied  Powers  can  hold  their  unity. 

In  view  of  all  the  horrors  of  the  past  war, 
in  view  of  all  the  promises  of  world  statesmen,  in 
view  of  the  facts  enumerated  above,  it  might  be 
thought  that  the  League  of  Nations  would  have 
a  fairly  easy  time  to  carry  out  its  Covenant  that 
"  the  maintenance  of  peace  requires  the  reduction 
of  national  armaments  to  the  lowest  point  con- 
sistent with  national  safety  and  the  enforcement 
by  common  action  of  international  obligations." 
Surely  if  ever  disarmament  would  seem  possible, 
it  should  be  after  the  world  had  fought  its  great- 
est war  and  overcome  its  most  implacable  enemy. 

But  unfortunately  certain  serious  disadvantages 
have  cropped  up  in  the  aftermath  of  war. 
First  among  these  is  the  fearfully  unsettled  state 
of  the  world  today.  Everything  is  in  turmoil. 
No  one  can  foresee  the  future.  Suspicion  and  dis- 
trust is  on  every  side,  even  among  the  victorious 
Allies.  Little  wars  which  may  easily  become  big 
ones  are  raging  in  many  sections,  and  the  solidar- 


96        The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

ity  born   of  the   war  is  being  seriously  shaken. 

Second,  there  is  an  undoubted  desire  among 
the  victorious  military  leaders  to  perpetuate  the 
machines  which  brought  them  victory.  And 
there  is  reason  in  this  desire  because  of  Germany's 
obvious  attempts  to  wriggle  out  of  the  Peace 
Treaty.  Such  efforts  justify  the  French  in  main- 
taining a  large  army;  they  cause  fear  and  uneas- 
iness on  all  sides;  they  have  their  repercussions  in 
Poland  and  Roumania.  They  provide  a  real 
raison  d'etre  to  which  the  professional  soldiery  is 
only  too  glad  to  apply  the  bellows  of  fear  and  ex- 
aggeration. 

Second,  there  is  navalism.  Great  Britain, 
Japan  and  the  United  States  seem  only  too  apt  to 
entangle  each  other  in  a  naval  competition  which 
none  of  them  wants.  Secretary  Daniels  has  an- 
nounced that  if  we  do  not  have  the  League  we 
must  have  u  incomparably  "  the  biggest  navy  in 
the  world,  and  the  staggering  sum  of  $425,000,- 
ooo  is  being  considered  as  an  appropriation. 
Great  Britain  sends  Jellicoe  around  her  colonies 
to  interest  them  in  naval  expansion,  while  Brit- 
ish  home  authorities  talk  of  appropriating 


Disarmament  97 

84,000,000  pounds  for  the  coming  year.  Japan, 
not  seeing  against  whom  these  navies  are  to  be 
used,  plods  quietly  ahead  on  her  enlarged  pro- 
gram, aided  by  all  the  profits  she  took  out  of  the 
war.  This  competition  is  at  present  purely  in- 
cipient; no  one  wants  it;  it  can  be  nipped  off  be- 
fore it  becomes  chronic,  always  provided  there  is 
sufficient  faith  and  confidence  to  do  so. 

So  we  have  the  world  today,  Central  Europe 
being  demilitarized;  France,  Poland  and  Rou- 
mania  building  up  big  armies;  Great  Britain, 
Japan  and  the  United  States  on  the  verge  of  a 
naval  competition;  distrust  only  too  general; 
more  men  under  arms  than  in  1914.  America 
talks  of  the  enormous  figure  of  nearly  a  billion  dol- 
lars next  year  for  army  and  navy;  Great  Britain 
of  $625,000,000  for  her  army  alone.  The  golden 
opportunity  seems  all  but  passing. 

And  meanwhile  matters  are  dragging  from  bad 
to  worse  financially.  Debts  instead  of  deflating 
are  inflating.  The  world's  economic  situation  is 
becoming  still  more  desperate.  The  Supreme 
Economic  Council,  in  a  bird's-eye  view  of  what  is 
wrong  with  the  world  recommends  u  that  armies 


98         The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

everywhere  should  be  reduced  to  a  peace  footing, 
that  armaments  should  be  reduced  to  the  lowest 
possible  figure  compatible  with  national  security, 
and  that  the  League  of  Nations  should  be  invited 
.  to  consider  as  soon  as  possible  proposals  to  this 
end." 

"  This  question  of  disarmament,"  said  Hoover 
in  his  appeal  to  the  American  people,  "  is  a  vital 
issue  to  us.  We  are  dependent  upon  our  foreign 
trade  for  much  of  our  prosperity  and  employ- 
ment. If  we  can  secure  no  safety  by  disarmament 
we  must  tax  ourselves  a  couple  of  billions  a  year 
and  enter  a  race  of  preparedness  and  build  up  a 
military  caste  of  our  own.  Is  it  not  worth  en- 
tering the  League  with  the  determination  to  at 
once  test  its  value  on  the  reduction  of  armaments 
to  a  real  defense  basis  within  a  measurable  time 
before  we  enter  the  race  with  no  goal  but  misery 
and  danger?  " 

S.uch  is  the  problem  the  League  must  attack. 
It  is  a  desperately  dangerous  problem  with  pit- 
falls lurking  in  every  corner.  Yet  it  must  be 
met,  because  the  world  demands  that  it  be  met. 
If  it  is  not,  the  war  will  have  been  fought  largely 


Disarmament  99 

in  vain  and  the  League  will  have  failed  in  its 
greatest  single  field  of  usefulness.  There  must 
be  no  delay  or  quibbling.  Action  must  be  initi- 
ated now,  for  at  best  long  months  of  investigation 
and  negotiation  will  be  required. 

This,  then,  brings  us  to  the  actual  powers  of 
the  League  as  to  disarmament.  How  far  can  it 
really  go?  The  answer  simply  is  that  it  has  the 
power  of  inquiry,  recommendation,  and  beyond 
that  nothing  but  the  moral  force  of  world  public 
opinion.  This  may  be  everything  or  nothing. 
Legally  of  course  it  is  very  little;  actually  it  may 
be  very  great.  Only  the  sincerity  of  the  League 
itself  and  the  governments  composing  it  will  sup- 
ply the  answer. 

Its  most  definite  power  perhaps  is  found  in 
Article  I  which  says  that  no  new  member  may  be 
admitted  to  the  League  until  it  "  shall  accept 
such  regulations  as  may  be  prescribed  by  the 
League  in  regard  to  its  military,  naval  and  air 
forces  and  armaments."  This  provision,  be  it 
noted,  applies  to  Russia  and  all  the  ex-enemy 
states,  Germany,  Austria,  Hungary,  Bulgaria  and 
Turkey.  They  cannot  become  members  of  the 


ioo      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

League  till  they  have  met  the  armament  require- 
ments, which  gives  the  League  a  very  real  and  a 
very  definite  control. 

Then  follow  the  more  detailed  provisions  of 
Articles  VIII  and  IX  applying  to  regular  members 
of  the  League.  Beginning  with  a  plea  for  re- 
duction of  armament  as  essential  to  the  mainte- 
nance of  peace,  it  is  provided  that  "  The  Council, 
taking  account  of  the  geographical  situation  and 
circumstances  of  each  state,  shall  f or mula tC-plan&— 
for  such  reduction  for  the  consideration  and  action 
of  the  several  governments."  Note  the  phras- 
ing: "  for  the  consideration  and  action  of  the  sev- 
eral governments  " ;  in  other  words  recommenda- 
tions which  each  state  may  or  may  not,  as  it  sees 
fit,  carry  into  execution. 

This,  then,  is  the  extent  of  the  power  of  the 
Council.  It  may  consider  the  question  of  arma- 
ments about  the  world,  draw  up  what  appears  to  it 
an  equitable  basis  of  armaments,  and  then  submit 
it  to  the  various  nations.  There  is  nothing  to 
obligate  those  nations  to  accept  the  recommenda- 
tion; nothing  that  gives  the  Council  power  to  in- 
terfere in  the  question  of  national  armaments  in 


Disarmament  101 

any  way  beyond  this  mere  recommendation.  If 
a  state  accepts  it,  so  much  the  better;  if  not  there 
is  no  penalty  except  the  force  of  world  public 
opinion. 

Then  comes  another  provision.  "  After  these 
plans  have  been  adopted  by  the  several  govern- 
ments, the  limits  of  armaments  therein  fixed  shall 
not  be  exceeded  without  the  concurrence  of  the 
Council."  This  is  a  bogey  to  some  people.  It 
simply  means,  however,  that  if  a  state  freely  and 
voluntarily  accepts  a  certain  program  and  if  other 
states  also  accept  certain  programs  based  upon 
that  original  program,  no  state  shall  be  free  to 
upset  the  whole  balance  whenever  it  sees  fit  with- 
out agreement  of  the  other  states.  In  other 
words  the  basis  which  may  finally  be  agreed  upon 
is  intended  to  have  some  permanence. 

But  not  by  any  means  to  be  perennial.  The 
Covenant  strictly  provides  that  such  plans  shall  be 
subject  to  reconsideration  and  revision  at  least 
every  ten  years.  So  if  political  conditions  change, 
armaments  can  be  made  to  change  in  conformity 
with  them  at  least  every  ten  years.  That  seems  a 
reasonable  period,  for  longer  would  tend  to  per- 


IO2      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

petuate  a  military  situation  without  regard  to  the 
political  situation  and  shorter  would  tend  not  to 
afford  the  degree  of  permanence  desired. 

Then  "  the  Members  of  the  League  agree  to 
undertake  to  exchange  full  and  frank  information 
as  to  the  scale  of  their  armaments,  their  military 
and  naval  programs  and  the  conditions  of  such 
of  their  industries  as  are  adaptable  to  warlike 
purposes."  This  is  one  of  the  greatest  advances 
towards  disarmament  ever  made.  Its  spirit  is 
bedded  in  a  feeling  of  mutual  faith  and  confidence 
among  the  nations.  If  carried  out,  it  will  put  an 
end  to  secret  preparations,  false  rumors,  vague 
sensations,  and  all  the  other  host  of  evils  upon 
which  militarists  and  demagogues  have  fattened 
in  the  past. 

Next,  the  principle  is  accepted  that  "  the  man- 
ufacture by  private  enterprise  of  munitions  and 
implements  of  war  is  open  to  grave  objection." 
This,  of  course,  is  aimed  at  overwhelming  estab- 
lishments like  the  Krupps  which  have  been  able 
not  only  to  mould  the  policy  of  their  own  govern- 
ments but  to  keep  a  whole  line  of  small,  satellite 
governments  in  a  constant  state  of  belligerency. 


Disarmament  103 

Private  manufacture  is  not  forbidden,  it  should 
be  noted,  because  certain  nations,  notably  the 
United  States,  are  dependent  on  private  sources, 
but  the  development  of  those  sources  into  vast 
cancer  sores  of  war  is  specifically  frowned  upon. 
The  Council  "  shall  advise  how  the  evil  effects  at- 
tendant upon  such  manufacture  can  be  prevented." 
Obviously,  there  is  here  provided  a  great  mul- 
tiplicity of  duties,  duties  also  which  are  of  the 
most  complex  and  specialized  character.  The 
Council,  as  a  body  of  statesmen,  would  certainly 
be  unfit  to  amplify  these  principles  into  all  their 
detailed  ramifications,  for  it  not  only  would  not 
have  the  time  but  it  would  soon  become  lost  in 
technical  details.  Therefore,  Article  VIII  pro- 
vides that  "  a  Permanent  Commission  shall  be 
constituted  to  advise  the  Council  on  the  execution 
of  Articles  I  and  VIII  and  on  military  and  naval 
questions  generally."  This  Commission  was 
named  at  the  Rome  Council  meeting  of  May  20. 
It  should  be  one  of  the  most  promising  bodies 
in  the  League.  It  has  the  power  to  draw  up 
plans  and  make  recommendations  which,  if  carried 
out  by  the  various  states,  will  go  far  towards  an- 


IO4      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

swering  the  universal  demand  for  freedom  from 
the  yoke  of  armaments.  It  holds  in  its  hands 
the  key  to  a  large  part  of  the  world's  economic 
future,  or  in  more  homely  terms,  to  the  amount 
of  taxes  you  and  I  will  have  to  pay  to  compete 
with  the  taxpayers  of  Great  Britain,  Japan  and 
other  nations. 

But  before  it  are  equally  great  difficulties. 
First,  the  military  elements  will  undoubtedly 
make  a  very  strong  effort  to  capture  it  and  con- 
vert it  to  their  own  profit.  They  will  be  loath 
indeed  to  see  any  commission  constituted  which 
might  both  counter  their  own  sincere  ideas  of 
national  protection  and  also  threaten  the  machine 
which  they  have  made  their  life  work.  Already 
indeed  this  attempt  at  domination  is  under  way 
and  it  is  as  well  that  the  world  should  be  aware 
of  it. 

The  balance  will  be  a  most  difficult  one  to 
strike.  If  too  many  military  men  are  included 
in  the  Commission,  its  purpose  will  be  destroyed. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  military  men  feel  them- 
selves ignored,  they  will  do  all  in  their  power  to 
cripple  and  confuse  the  Commission,  and  in  a  sub- 


Disarmament  105 

ject  so  complex  and  detailed  that  will  be  a  great 
deal.  The  ideal  solution,  of  course,  is  to  have 
the  major  principles  laid  down  by  statesmen  re- 
sponsive to  the  moral  opinion  of  the  world  and 
the  details  worked  out  by  military  and  naval  ex- 
perts who  know  how  to  make  these  principles 
effective. 

In  meeting  the  question  of  disarmament  itself, 
the  immensely  complicated  problem  at  once  arises, 
what  are  armaments  and  on  what  principle  can 
one  weapon  of  destruction  be  valued  as  against  an- 
other? Should  an  airplane  be  given  equal  value 
with  a  tank  and  a  torpedo  boat  with  a  submarine, 
or  should  some  percentage  ratio  be  adopted? 
Different  nations  will  work  out  their  defense  pro- 
grams on  different  bases  and  with  different  values, 
while  at  any  moment  some  new  invention  is  apt  to 
tip  everything  upside  down. 

Probably  the  best  approximation  will  be  to  con- 
sider first  the  offensive  or  the  defensive  nature  of 
the  armaments,  and  second,  the  total  number  of 
men  enrolled.  Certainly  a  state  which  confines 
its  defense  to,  say,  coast  defense  batteries  shows  a 
less  belligerent  character  and  is  less  a  menace  to 


106       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

the  peace  of  the  world  than  one  equipped  with  fast 
travelling  artillery. 

These  difficulties  are  insuperable  only  if  they 
are  approached  in  bad  faith.  And  there  is  just 
one  atmosphere  in  which  they  will  be  approached 
in  bad  faith;  namely,  indifference  and  unconcern 
among  the  publics  of  the  world.  If  now,  after 
all  the  lessons  of  the  war,  public  interest  in  re- 
duction of  armaments  oozes  out  and  matters  are 
allowed  to  drift  merely  of  their  own  momentum, 
we  shall  inevitably  find  ourselves  back  in  the  old 
whirlpool  of  armaments  and  counter  armaments. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  public  opinion,  is  bold,  ag- 
gressive, and  insistent,  if  it  refuses  to  accept  no, 
if  it  rides  down  all  opposition,  its  voice  will  be 
heard;  the  vicious  circle  will  be  broken;  the  world 
will  be  freed  to  devote  its  energies  to  peace;  and 
the  chances  of  another  Armageddon  will  fade 
away. 


MINORITIES 

FEW  people  realize  what  a  very  personal  and 
direct  relationship  the  League  of  Nations  bears  to 
large  aggregations  of  individuals  in  some  of  the 
most  contested  political  sections  of  the  world. 
To  many  observers,  the  League  is  a  mere  theory 
of  cooperation  between  nations,  a  vague  possibility 
of  the  future,  without  immediate  responsibilities 
or  direct  administrative  powers.  The  truth  is, 
however,  quite  different. 

Many  thousands  of  people,  indeed,  must  look 
on  the  League  either  as  their  direct  governor  or 
as  their  ultimate  hope  of  freedom  from  persecu- 
tion. If  the  League  has  no  territory  of  its  own, 
it  is  today  governing  the  all-important  Saar  Valley 
whose  six  hundred  thousand  people  receive  from 
a  Commission  appointed  by  the  League  their  day- 
to-day  government  and  administration.  If  it  has 
no  capital,  it  is  nevertheless  administering  the  key 
city  of  Danzig  whose  two  hundred  thousand  peo- 
ple are  living  under  the  authority  of  a  High  Com- 

107 


io8       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

missioner  appointed  by  the  League.  If  it  has 
no  citizens,  it  has  accepted  the  obligation  to  pro- 
tect the  various  racial,  religious  and  linguistic  mi- 
norities embedded  in  overwhelming  hostile  major- 
ities in  Poland,  Czecho-Slovakia,  Jugo-Slavia, 
Austria,  Roumania  and  Turkey  against  the  abuses 
which  have  poisoned  history. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  League  has  been  pushed 
for  months  by  the  Supreme  Council  of  the  Allies 
to  accept  a  mandate  for  the  persecuted  people  of 
Armenia;  by  practically  every  negotiator  to  ac- 
cept some  sort  of  oversight  over  the  Fiume  dis- 
trict ;  by  still  others  to  settle  the  age-long  problem 
of  Constantinople  by  assuring  an  international  ad- 
ministration in  the  benefit  of  all  nations.  The 
old  diplomacy  has  failed  in  these  many  instances 
to  work  out  a  solution  acceptable  to  all;  there- 
fore it  has  turned  to  the  new  diplomacy  in  the 
hope  that  cooperation  between  the  nations  may 
succeed  where  competition  has  gone  bankrupt. 

The  League  has  not  sought  this  task.  Indeed 
it  desires  just  as  little  of  it  as  possible.  The  work 
involves  most  difficult  and  complicated  obligations; 
it  is  based  either  on  age-long  prejudices  or  war 


Minorities  109 

bitternesses;  it  offers  very  little  of  glory  and  much 
of  danger.  But  the  League  has  had  to  take  it, 
for  the  bare,  simple  reason  that  no  other  organ- 
ization was  qualified  to  take  it.  Having  entered 
the  field,  it  is  going  ahead  with  every  energy  to 
make  the  results  embody  some  of  the  hopes  of 
those  placed  in  its  trust. 

The  object  is  two-fold:  first^jto-deterrnine  the 
status  of  certajn  contested  sections  -  which  might 
serve  as  tinderboxes  of  war  between  the  nations, 
and  second  to  assure  such  protection  to  certain 
minorities  that  they  will  not  feel  called  upon  as, 
for  instance,  did  the  Serbs  in  Austria  in  1914,  to 
threaten  the  peace  of  the  world  by  sowing  enmity 
between  states.  This  is  both  good  insurance 
against  war  for  the  big  states  and  assurance  of 
protection  from  persecution  for  the  minorities. 
Every  one  stands  to  gain  except  either  an  im- 
perialistic government  which  desires  annexation, 
or  an  over-weening  majority  which  seeks  the  de- 
struction of  a  minority  in  its  midst. 

The  world's  immediate  after-war  need  is  obvi- 
ous. "  In  order  to  build  on  strong  foundations 
the  structure  of  tomorrow,"  said  M.  Bourgeois 


no      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

of  France  at  the  first  meeting  of  the  League  Coun- 
cil on  January  16,  u  we  must  first  remove  the 
ruins  accumulated  by  the  war."  This  is  one  of 
the  most  delicate  tasks  conceivable,  for  the  injury 
differs  in  various  cases,  and  the  feelings  on  both 
sides  are  at  fever  heat.  Nevertheless,  the  at- 
tempt must  be  made. 

This  brings  us  to  the  Saar  Valley,  the  first 
responsibility  thrust  upon  the  League.  During 
the  war  the  Germans  had  outrageously  gutted  the 
rich  coal  mines  of  Northern  France,  gutted  them 
so  effectively  indeed  that  coal  cannot  be  brought 
forth  again  for  years.  The  action  seemed  taken 
fully  as  much  for  the  purpose  of  crippling  France 
in  the  after-war  competition  as  for  purely  mili- 
tary reasons,  especially  as  most  of  the  damage  was 
done  when  the  German  armies  were  in  their  final 
rout. 

But  coal  is  the  lifeblood  of  an  industrial  nation. 
To  rob  it  of  coal  is  to  enslave  it  to  foreign  mines. 
JHtence,  France,  with  her  Lens  fields  flooded  al- 
most to  the  mine  openings,  saw  before  her  a 
period  of  dependence  either  on  British  coal  or, 
far  worse,  on  the  untouched  mines  of  Germany. 


Minorities  ill 

Obviously  this  was  intolerable,  and  constituted  a 
wrong  which  had  to  be  righted  at  the  Peace  Con- 
ference, all  the  more  because  Germany's  action  was 
largely  vand?l. 

The  surest  way  to  do  it  was  to  make  payment 
in  kind;  namely,  to  force  Germany  to  deliver 
France  so  many  thousands  of  tons  of  coal  annually 
till  the  damage  had  been  repaired.  And  as  this 
meant  a  very  large  figure,  it  was  decided  to  give 
France  the  outright  ownership  of  certain  mines 
in  the  Saar  Valley  contiguous  to  France.  This 
represented  a  practical  reparation,  France  to  own 
these  rich  fields  in  full  title,  but  Germany  to  have 
the  privilege  of  repurchase  when  the  Lens  fields 
should  have  been  restored. 

Transfer  of  what  represented  the  life  of  the 
Valley  naturally  entailed  certain  political  changes. 
Obviously  Germany  could  not  continue  to  exercise 
full  political  sovereignty,  for  conflict  would  have 
been  certain  between  the  political  and  the  eco- 
nomic controllers.     Equally  obviously  the  political 
control  could  not  be  given  to  France,  because  the  . 
population  consisted  of  about  650,000  inhabitants! 
of  pure  German  stock. 


ii2       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

So  the  League  of  Nations  was  called  upon. 
Germany  was  required  to  relinquish  sovereignty 
over  the  district  in  favor  of  the  League  for  a 
period  of  fifteen  years,  after  which  the  inhabitants 
should  decide  by  plebiscite  whether  they  wish  to 
! continue  on  under  the  League  or  to  be  amalga- 
mated with  France  or  Germany,  only  those  voting 
who  are  today  residents  of  the  district.  Thus 
France  is  given  reparation;  the  inhabitants  of  the 
district  are  assured  an  international  administra- 
tion rather  than  annexation  to  a  foreign  power; 
Germany  meets  her  bill,  and  has  the  assurance  of 
a  plebiscite  in  the  district  at  the  end  of  fifteen  years 
as  well  as  the  right  to  buy  back  the  mines. 

The  Peace  Treaty  provisions  are  very  specific. 
The  League  was  required  to  name  a  boundary 
Commission  within  fifteen  days  of  the  ratification 
of  the  Treaty.  Hence  came  into  being  the  first 
meeting  of  the  League  held  at  Paris  on  January 
1 6,  1920,  for  this  specific  purpose,  when  Colonel 
Wace  of  Great  Britain,  Col.  Leite  de  Castro  of 
Brazil,  and  Commandant  Kobayashi  of  Japan 
were  selected  as  the  three  League  members,  to  be 
added  to  a  representative  of  both  France  and 


Minorities  113 

Germany.  It  is  interesting  that  this  first  purely 
European  problem  should  be  settled  by  an  English- 
man, a  Jap  and  a  Brazilian,  who  might  well  be 
expected  tp  be  impartial. 

But  the  Governing  Commission  was  far  more 
important.  To  this  body,  as  representative  of 
the  League,  fell  all  the  powers  formerly  exercised 
by  Germany,  Prussia,  or  Bavaria,  in  fact  every- 
thing. The  six  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  in- 
habitants of  the  Valley  were  placed  absolutely 
under  its  charge,  subject  only  to  the  check  of  the 
League  itself.  At  the  second  meeting  of  the 
Council,  on  February  13,  on  the  recommendation 
of  the  Greek  representative,  M.  Caclamanos,  the 
following  were  appointed:  M.  Rault,  State  Coun- 
cillor, of  France;  Mr.  Alfred  von  Boch,  Landrath 
de  Sarrelouis;  Major  Lambert  of  Belgium;  Count 
de  Molkte  Hvitfeldt  of  Denmark,  and  Mr. 
Waugh  of  Canada.  These  men  serve  for  one 
year,  at  a  salary  of  100,000  francs. 

Full  instructions  were  given  them.  These  in- 
structions were  quite  specific  as  to  the  general 
purpose  and  spirit  in  which  the  trust  should  be 
carried  out  but  general  as  to  actual  details.  It 


H4      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

was  desired,  first  to  inculcate  the  Commission  with 
the  theory  of  absolute  impartiality  with  which  the 
League  must  approach  the  administration  of  its 
trust  in  the  Saar  Valley,  and  second  to  leave  the 
Commission  full  power  of  local  initiative  in  order 
to  assure  efficiency  and  to  keep  the  League  itself 
free  from  the  detailed  problems. 

This  Commission  formally  assumed  its  duties 
;February  26,  1920.  For  the  next  fifteen  years 
it  will  govern  the  Saar  Valley.  To  the  people  of 
the  Saar  it  represents  the  final  administration  sub- 
ject to  appeal  to  the  League  only.  Thus  within 
the  Saar  the  League  will  take  on  a  very  different 
aspect  from  what  it  has  generally.  We  shall  hear 
much  of  it,  for  complex  questions  have  already 
arisen  and  will  continue  to  arise  during  the  com- 
ing years. 

Then  take  Danzig.  Here  is  a  key  seaport  of 
northeastern  Europe,  the  only  available  outlet 
to  the  sea  for  the  new  Poland's  25,000,000  peo- 
ple. Though  historically  Polish  and  set  in  a  vast 
hinterland  of  Poles,  the  city  itself  has  in  the  past 
century  been  so  ruthlessly  Germanized  that  today 
it  is  admittedly  far  more  German  than  Polish  in 


Minorities  115 

its  purely  local  aspects.  To  the  Poles  the  city 
represents  a  life  artery  of  trade,  the  one  outlet  to 
blue  water,  while  to  the  Germans  it  represents  a 
city  profoundly  German  in  character,  with  its 
present  affiliations  largely  reaching  out  into  Ger- 
many. 

Its  disposition  proved  one  of  the  most  thorny 
problems  of  the  Peace  Conference,  an  almost  in- 
soluble conflict  between  the  opposing  theories  of 
free  access  to  the  sea  and  of  local  self-determina- 
tion. To  award  the  city  outright  to  either  Poland 
or  Germany  meant  long  years  of  protest  and  in- 
trigue by  the  defeated  interests,  backed  by  a  strong 
moral  argument  and  formidable  power. 

Therefore,  a  compromise  was  struck.     Danzig 
was  "  established  as  a  Free  City  and  placed  under, 
the  protection  of  the  League  of  Nations,"  which) 
was  in  fact  to  restore  the  status  under  which  it 
had  so  richly  prospered  during  its  earlier  history. 
Of  course  neither  Poland  nor  Germany  was  satis- 
fied, but  at  least  neither  was  as  dissatisfied  as  if 
there  had  been    an   outright   award.     Poland   is 
assured  her  outlet  to  the  sea;  Germany  has  the 
satisfaction  of  not  seeing  the  city  transferred  to 


u6       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

an  alien  nation;  and  the  inhabitants  are  assured 
local  autonomy  under  the  protection  of  the 
League. 

Here  again  immediate  action  was  necessary. 
The  League  Council  on  February  13,  on  report  of 
M.  Hymans  of  Belgium,  appointed  Sir  Reginald 
Tower  of  Great  Britain,  previously  Allied  repre- 
sentative at  Danzig,  to  be  High  Commissioner  of 
the  Free  City  subject  to  control  by  the  League. 
Sir  Reginald  was  instructed  to  draw  up  in  agree- 
ment with  the  duly  appointed  representatives  of 
the  city  a  constitution  to  be  approved  by  the 
League;  to  deal  in  the  first  instance  with  any 
questions  arising  between  the  city  and  Poland; 
and  to  keep  the  League  Council  fully  informed  of 
all  matters  within  his  jurisdiction.  In  a  general 
way  he  serves  as  mediator  in  the  conflict  between 
Polish  and  German  interests. 

The  protection  of  racial,  religious  and  linguistic 
minorities,  as  provided  in  the  various  peace  treaties 
and  in  certain  special  treaties,  is  a  task  certainly 
far  more  indefinite  and  perhaps  even  more  diffi- 
cult than  the  administration  of  the  Saar  Valley 
and  the  Danzig  regions.  For  it  involves  both 


Minorities  117 

very  fine  judgment  as  to  the  moment  of  its  en- 
forcement and  at  the  same  time  a  perhaps  un- 
gracious interference  in  the  internal  affairs  of 
certain  new  European  nations. 

Protection  of  minorities  was  one  of  the  key-  J 
stones  of  the  new  structure  which  was  to  be  built, 
to  remove  the  causes  of  war.  It  is  not  in  any 
sense  a  new  principle ;  indeed  it  dates  far  back  into 
the  exigencies  of  European  history  where  so  many 
wandering  eddies  of  people  have  been  swept  off 
under  alien  rule.  As  M.  Clemenceau  wrote  Mr. 
Paderewski  in  June,  1919  :  "  It  has  for  a  long  time 
been  the  established  procedure  of  public  law  of 
Europe  that  when  a  State  is  created,  or  even 
when  large  accessions  of  territory  are  made  to  an 
established  State,  the  joint  and  formal  recogni- 
tion by  the  great  Powers  should  be  accompanied 
by  the  requirement  that  such  State  should,  in  the 
form  of  a  binding  international  convention,  under- 
take to  comply  with  certain  principles  of  govern- 
ment." 

Upon  this  basis,  general  but  at  the  same  time 
strict  clauses  were  put  into  various  treaties  drawn 
at  Paris  seeking  to  safeguard  the  new  political 


n8       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

alignments  of  Europe.  Never  was  there  greater 
need.  The  new  Poland  contains  large  numbers  of 
Germans,  Austrians,  Russians  and  the  ever  perse- 
cuted Jews;  Czecho-Slovakia  contains  many  Ger- 
mans and  other  aliens;  Roumania  has  had  to  take 
over  many  Magyars  in  securing  her  new  racial 
frontiers;  the  lands  added  to  Jugo-Slavia  brought 
in  many  aliens  in  addition  to  the  dominating  Jugo- 
Slav  population;  while  whatever  the  final  Turkish 
decision  may  be,  millions  of  Christians  are  certain 
to  continue  on  under  Ottoman  rule. 

The  provisions  for  protection  vary  one  from 
another  according  to  the  local  situation,  but  in 
their  ultimate  purpose  are  the  same.  The  spe- 
cial Treaty  signed  between  the  Five  Principal 
Allied  and  Associated  Powers  and  Poland  on  the 
same  day  that  Germany  signed  the  Treaty  of 
Versailles,  though  perhaps  more  specific  and  de- 
tailed than  the  others,  may,  however,  be  taken  as 
a  sample,  as  it  is  practically  identical  with  treaties 
signed  by  Czecho-Slovakia,  Jugo-Slavia,  Rou- 
mania and  Turkey. 

"  Full  and  complete  protection  of  life  and  lib- 
erty to  all  inhabitants  of  Poland,  without  dis- 


Minorities  119 

tinction  of  birth,  nationality,  language,  race  or 
religion,"  with  the  full  right  to  exercise  any  creed, 
religion  or  belief,  with  adequate  facilities  for  the 
use  of  minority  languages,  both  in  schools  and 
before  the  courts,  and  with  special  provisions  to 
secure  respect  for  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  is  recog- 
nized as  "  fundamental  law  "  which  must  be  kept 
inviolate.  This  law  is  placed  u  under  the  guaran- 
tee of  the  League  of  Nations  "  and  "  shall  not  be 
modified  without  the  assent  of  a  majority  of  the 
Council  of  the  League."  Any  member  of  the 
Council  may  bring  before  that  body  any  infrac- 
tion or  danger  of  infraction,  all  disputes  to  be 
submitted  to  the  Permanent  Court  of  Interna- 
tional Justice. 

This  is  a  very  great,  if  a  very  indefinite  power. 
Under  it  the  League  is  authorized  to  protest 
formally  any  pogrom  against  the  Jews,  such  as 
are  frequently  reported,  or  to  take  up  any  sup- 
pression of  a  minority  language.  Very  naturally 
it  is  a  power  which  can  and  will  be  exercised  only 
most  sparingly,  as  indeed  its  greatest  effectiveness 
lies  far  more  in  the  threat  of  its  use  than  in  the 
actual  use  itself. 


I2O      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

There  is  no  exact  precedent  for  it.  The  minor- 
ity clauses  in  previous  treaties  have  relied  for 
their  execution,  not  on  an  organized,  permanent 
body,  but  rather  on  a  transient  alliance.  They 
have  not  had  great  moral  authority  in  their  origin 
or  in  their  safeguarding.  Once  written  into  the 
Treaty,  it  has  been  quite  simple  to  forget  them. 

Now,  however,  there  is  a  permanent,  continu- 
ous, ever  ready  court  of  appeal,  easy  of  access  and 
sure  of  action.  Even  within  this  short  time  cer- 
tain laws  have  been  proposed  and  certain  restric- 
tions planned  in  various  countries  which  the 
League  has  been  quick  to  see  violate  the  terms  of 
these  provisions.  As  yet  no  action  has  been  neces- 
sary because  the  definite  cause  nas  not  arisen,  but 
it  is  encouraging  to  know  that  a  vigil  is  being  kept 
and  that  a  recourse  is  open. 

Few  nations  indeed  would  be  so  hardy  as  to  dis- 
regard a  statement  by  the  League  of  Nations  in 
such  a  matter.  No  such  statement  would  come 
unless,  first,  the  nation  in  question  had  violated 
the  terms  of  a  solemn  treaty  and,  second,  unless 
the  other  nations  on  the  League  Council  agreed 
that  it  had  done  so  and  that  a  public  protest  should 


Minorities  121 

be  addressed  to  it.  It  does  not  seem  strained  to 
say  that  an  enormous  stride  forward  has  been 
taken  towards  removing  one  of  the  worst  causes 
of  unrest  and  friction  between  the  nations. 

Thus  in  these  many  cases,  in  the  cases  of  pro- 
tection of  minorities,  and  in  the  cases  of  the  Saar 
Valley  and  Danzig,  the  League  has  a  very  direct 
and  personal  relationship  to  a  large  number  of 
individuals.  It  has  been  called  in  as  the  only 
agency  able  to  care  for  certain  very  serious  but 
very  elusive  international  difficulties.  If  it  can 
succeed  in  these  fields,  it  will  not  only  be  of  im- 
measurable value  to  those  immediately  affected, 
but  it  will  sweep  away  a  number  of  international 
wrongs  most  likely  to  lead  to  hostilities. 


MANDATES 

"  A  PERMANENT  COMMISSION  shall  be  consti- 
tuted to  receive  and  examine  the  annual  reports 
of  the  Mandatories  and  to  advise  the  Council  on 
all  matters  relating  to  the  observance  of  the  man- 
dates." 

These  are  cold  words,  perhaps,  to  many  of  us, 
but  they  are  warm  indeed  to  thirteen  millions  of 
people  in  Africa,  several  hundreds  of  thousands 
more  in  Oceanica,  and  possibly  several  other  mil- 
lions in  the  former  Turkish  Empire.  This  one 
short  sentence  of  Article'JXII  of  the  League 
Covenant  contains  within  it  the  possibility  of  the 
greatest  organized  attempt  at  service  that  the 
civilized  world  has  ever  united  to  make.  It  bids 
fair  to  ring  down  the  curtain  on  the  old  days  of 
colonial  exploitation  and  create  certain  bright 
spots  throughout  the  vast  stretches  of  Africa  and 
the  East  Indies  which  cannot  but  raise  the  whole 
moral  standard  of  the  world. 

Large  aggregations  of  helpless,  dependent  peo- 

122 


Mandates  123 

pies  were  left  derelict  when  the  war  disintegrated 
the  German  and  Turkish  Empires.  Under  all 
previous  precedent  they  would  have  been  the  spoils 
of  war,  turned  over  to  their  conquerors  for  ruth- 
less exploitation  in  their  far-away  corners  of  the 
world.  But  our  slowly  rising  moral  standards  re- 
volted at  such  wholesale  disregard  of  the  elemental 
human  rights  of  those  unable  to  defend  them- 
selves. Therefore  these  peoples  were  made 
wards  of  civilization,  guaranteed  a  charter  of 
rights,  and  assured  the  protection  of  society  or- 
ganized in  the  League  of  Nations. 

This  phase  of  league  activity  touches  us  very 
directly.  We  do  not  want  all  of  Africa  made 
into  a  closed  preserve  for  European  exploitation. 
We  desire  the  open  door  in  all  these  backward 
countries.  Our  trade  is  now  reaching  out  into 
every  land  and  every  sea.  We  ask  only  that  it 
have  equal  opportunity  with  the  trade  of  other 
nations.  By  establishing  these  large  tracts  as 
mandates,  we  shall  secure  that  object.  If  the 
open  door  is  threatened,  we  no  longer  are  re- 
stricted to  fulminating  high  diplomatic  notes 
which  usually  have  little  effect  beyond  the  thrill 


124      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

of  reading  them.  We  can  now  urge  the  breach 
of  a  solemn  contract  before  the  League  of  Nations. 

Beyond  this,  however,  we  are  ourselves  the 
authors  of  this  system  of  trusteeship  of  backward 
peoples.  After  the  Spanish  War  Cuba  and  the 
Philippines  fell  into  our  laps.  We  did  not -want 
them  but  we  could  not  get  rid  of  them.  So  we 
educated  them.  Cuba  we  have  already  set  free 
as  an  independent,  sovereign  state ;  the  Philippines 
we  are  going  about  setting  free  just  as  fast  as  the 
ability  of  the  natives  rises  to  the  opportunity.  In 
both  cases  we  regarded  ourselves  as  temporary 
governors  entrusted  with  the  development  of  the 
natives  for  the  good  of  the  natives.  And  now 
we  are  to  see  vastly  larger  territories  given  out 
among  half  a  dozen  different  nations  to  be 
handled  in  much  the  same  way,  except  that  here 
the  controlling  authority  will  not  be  the  good  con- 
science of  any  one  nation  but  the  united  conscience 
of  all. 

If  any  phase  of  the  peace  settlement  seemed 
agreed  to  when  the  Peace  Conference  opened,  it 
was  the  general  principle  of  trusteeship  of  back- 
ward peoples.  President  Wilson  in  his  Fourteen 


Mandates  125 

Points  had  set  forth  that  "  The  interests  of  the 
populations  concerned  must  have  equal  weight 
with  the  equitable  claims  of  the  government  whose 
title  has  to  be  determined;''  Lloyd  George  had 
said  that  "  the  governing  consideration  must  be 
that  the  inhabitants  should  be  placed  under  the 
control  of  an  administration  acceptable  to  them- 
selves," General  Smuts  had  warned  against  a 
"  scramble  among  the  victors  for  this  loot  "  or 
"  an  application  of  the  spoils  system  at  this  most 
solemn  juncture  in  the  history  of  the  world." 

But  the  details  remained  and  these  details 
nearly  broke  up  the  Conference.  It  was  always 
simple  enough  to  say  that  the  colonies  should  not 
return  to  Germany,  because  Germany  had  noto- 
riously abused  them  and  they  had  been  of  very 
little  value  to  her,  only  10.000  of  her  people  and 
one-third  of  one  per  cent  of  her  foreign  trade 
going  to  them.  It  was  equally  simple,  also,  to 
say  that  their  development  should  be  entrusted  to 
a  single  nation  as  trustee  for  all  nations  rather 
than  to  a  joint  international  administration,  as 
such  joint  administrations  had  proved  inefficient  in 
the  past. 


126       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

But  it  was  not  so  easy  to  define  the  terms  of 
the  trust.  Lloyd  George  brought  in  a  plan. 
President  Wilson  concurred  in  it.  Clemenceau 
finally  agreed  over  the  protest  of  the  French  ex- 
perts. But  the  British  Dominions  broke  loose  en- 
tirely. Premier  Hughes  of  Australia  wanted 
New  Guinea,  and  wanted  it  outright.  He  worked 
the  Conference  up  into  a  crisis  which  for  some 
time  threatened  to  disrupt  it,  even  making  mat- 
ters so  warm  that  President  Wilson  asked  him  if 
he  should  be  understood  as  delivering  an  ulti- 
matum. 

At  last,  however,  on  January  20,  1919,  agree- 
ment was  reached.  That  agreement  was  taken 
over  almost  bodily  into  Article  XXII  of  the 
Covenant,  which  in  stating  that  "  the  well-being 
and  development  of  such  peoples  form  a  sacred 
trust  of  civilization,"  creates  a  new  Magna  Charta 
for  the  weak,  backward,  undeveloped  peoples  of 
the  world.  The  derelict  countries  are  then  di- 
vided into  three  classes  according  to  the  develop- 
ment of  their  people,  their  geographical  relation- 
ship to  the  mandatory  power,  and  their  economic 
condition. 


Mandates  127 

Further  elaboration,  however,  was  still  neces- 
sary. On  June  29  a  special  Mandates  Commis- 
sion of  five  great  Powers,  including  the  United 
States,  laid  down  details  of  the  first  two  groups  of 
mandates,  leaving  the  third  group  which  should 
include  the  former  Turkish  territories  to  be  dis- 
cussed after  the  Turkish  treaty  had  been  com- 
pleted. Merely  the  filling  in  of  the  name  of  the 
mandate  country  as  approved  by  the  Assembly 
remained. 

The  mandates  are  drawn  as  treaties  of  trust 
which  the  mandatory  power  agrees  to  execute  "  on 
behalf  of  the  League  of  Nations."  That  nation 
must  protect  the  native  against  the  arms,  drug  and 
liquor  traffic,  from  slavery,  forced  labor  and  land 
abuses.  It  must  guarantee  equal  rights  to  na- 
tionals of  other  states  members  of  the  League.  It 
must  submit  "  an  annual  report  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  Council,  containing  full  information  con- 
cerning the  measures  taken  to  apply  the  provisions 
of  this  mandate."  It  must  submit  all  disputes  to 
the  Permanent  Court  of  International  Justice. 

Two  details  remained  unsettled.  Japan  pro- 
tested because  the  open  door  and  freedom  of 


128       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

immigration  were  not  prescribed  for  South 
Africa  and  New  Guinea,  an  omission  purposely 
made  to  meet  South  Africa's  fiscal  policy  and 
Australia's  "  white  Australia  "  policy  respectively. 
France  insisted  that  troops  may  be  raised  in  man- 
dated territories  not  only  for  local  defense  but 
for  the  defense  of  the  mother  country,  a  prohibi- 
tion originally  made  to  prevent  the  militarizing 
of  backward  countries  as  a  part  of  European 
politics.  Both  claims  await  early  decision  by  the 
Assembly  or  Council. 

During  the  Peace  Conference  the  mandates  were 
partially  awarded.  The  day  Germany  was 
handed  the  Treaty,  the  Big  Four  made  the  first 
announcements.  After  some  adjustments  Togo- 
land  and  the  Cameroons  on  the  west  coast  of  Cen- 
tral Africa  were  divided  between  Great  Britain 
and  France;  German  East  Africa  between  Great 
Britain  and  Belgium;  German  Southwest  Africa 
allotted  to  South  Africa;  New  Guinea  and  the 
South  Pacific  Islands  divided  between  Australia 
and  New  Zealand,  and  the  North  Pacific  Islands 
allotted  Japan. 

There  still  remained  the  disposition  of  all  that 


Mandates  1 29 

vast  territory  wrested  from  the  Turk,  Palestine, 
Syria,  Armenia  and  Mesopotamia,  which  includes 
some  of  the  richest  and  most  populous  parts  of 
the  world  but  which  had  to  await  the  settlement  of 
the  Turkish  problem  as  a  whole.  Moreover,  the 
project  of  placing  certain  parts  of  Central  Europe 
such  as  Galicia  under  mandate  has  been  revived, 
and  it  is  very  possible  that  some  of  the  insoluble 
territorial  problems  of  that  torn  section  may  be 
temporarily  adjusted  in  this  way. 

The  mandatory  work  of  the  League  will  be 
among  its  most  important,  and  certainly  its  least 
open  to  attack.  The  mandatory  principle  is  one 
of  the  best  guarantees  of  a  new  spirit  in  inter- 
national relations,  for  it  substitutes  the  principle 
of  responsibility  to  a  common  world  morality  for 
that  of  purely  selfish  exploitation.  It  is  not  that 
the  world  has  become  suddenly  purged  of  all  its 
graspings;  far  from  it  indeed.  It  means  simply 
that  a  method  has  now  been  worked  out  for  the 
execution  of  a  principle  which  every  one  is  glad 
to  accept  in  theory. 

But  all  this  presages  organization.  The  Ger- 
man plan  for  a  League  even  went  so  far  as 


.., 

to 


130       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

\  call  for  an  International  Colonial  Office.  While 
the  actual  League  is  not  quite  so  ambitious,  an  or- 
ganization was  very  shortly  outlined  to  carry  the 
principles  into  effect.  Most  important,  of  course, 
will  be  the  Mandatory  Commission  provided  in 
the  Covenant,  which  will  consist  of  representatives 
of  mandatory  and  colonial  states,  with  a  small 
permanent  force  of  experts  expanded  once  a  year 
by  the  addition  of  special  delegates  to  the  annual 

(conference.  The  Secretariat  of  the  League  also 
has  a  Mandatory  Section,  with  a  more  widely  in- 
ternational composition  and  a  more  direct  respon- 
sibility to  the  Council  and  the  Assembly.  Then, 
to  avoid  duplication  and  waste  effort,  as  many 
as  possible  of  the  many  existing  international 
bureaus  dealing  with  colonial  matters,  such  as  the 
arms,  drugs  and  liquor  commissions,  will  be 
brought  under  the  wing  of  the  Secretariat. 

Every  year  we  shall  have  a  meeting  of  the 
League  before  which  each  government  entrusted 
with  the  administration  of  a  backward  people  will 
make  itSj  report  to  the  conscience  of  mankind. 
Imagine  the  scene  when  Great  Britain,  and  France, 
and  Australia,  and  Belgium,  and  South  Africa, 


Mandates  131 

and  Japan  all  come  before  this  tribunal  and  state 
just  what  they  have  done  during  the  past  year 
for  the  natives  placed  under  their  guardianship. 
Slave  raids  cannot  continue  under  this  world  spot- 
light; the  nefarious  traffic  in  arms,  drugs  and 
liquors  must  cease;  the  wholesale  destruction  of 
tribes  such  as  that  of  the  Herreros  by  the  Ger- 
mans will  be  at  an  end,  and  most  probably  the 
slaughter  of  the  Armenians  will  be  terminated. 

Or  take  the  terrible  abuses  years  ago  in  the 
Belgian  Congo,  which  are  still  fresh  in  men's 
minds.  Outraged  though  the  civilized  world  was 
at  the  reports  which  came  from  that  vast  territory, 
no  instrumentality  was  at  hand  through  which  it 
could  act.  The  International  Conference  at 
Brussels  in  1890  .had  laid  down  generous  rules 
for  African  colonization  but  had  provided  no 
method  by  which  it  could  automatically  reassemble 
to  see  that  those  rules  were  being  respected. 
Consequently,  the  various  nations  all  stood  silent, 
each  fearful  of  taking  any  action  which  might 
appear  unfriendly.  The  League  of  Nations  or- 
ganization, however,  dissipates  this  danger  at 
once  through  the  simple  provision  of  an  annual 


132       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

conference  and  the  necessity  of  a  full  report  "  to 
the  satisfaction  of  the  Council." 

It  would  be  a  bold  nation  which  would  refuse  to 
bring  itself  in  line  with  enlightened  practice  or 
withstand  the  directed  criticism  of  world  public 
opinion.  It  is  not  too  much  to  hope  that  under 
the  urge  of  publicity  the  pride  of  the  various  na- 
tions may  be  stimulated  to  a  new  kind  of  competi- 
tion, a  competition  not  to  see  how  much  they  can 
get  out  of  their  wards  but  rather  to  see  how  much 
they  can  put  into  them.  The  French  might  well 
be  disappointed  if  the  British  made  a  better  show- 
ng  in  developing  one  of  their  colonies,  or  the  South 
Africans  come  to  vie  with  the  Australians  in  the 
work  given  them. 

And  if  such  a  lift  in  standards  occurs  in  the 
territories  under  mandate,  is  it  conceivable  that  it 
will  be  without  effect  on  the  vast  colonial  world 
not  so  controlled?  If  the  former  German 
Cameroons,  for  instance,  are  freed  from  many  of 
the  existing  colonial  evils,  would  it  be  possible  for 
the  old-line  colonies  right  alongside  to  persist  in 
these  abuses?  Hardly,  indeed,  for,  after  all, 
good  is  contagious  in  this  world  of  ours,  and  the 


Mandates  133 

/ 

natural  tendency  is  for  people  to  lift  themselves 

higher  and  still  higher  all  the  time. 

The  mandate  principle  marks  such  a  complete 
reversal  of  the  commonly  accepted  practises  of 
colonial  exploitation  and  such  a  stride  forward  in 
service  to  the  backward  peoples  that  many  earnest 
observers  fear  it  is  too  good  for  a  greedy,  cold- 
blooded world.  That  danger  must  be  admitted 
frankly  at  the  very  outset.  The  mandate  prin- 
ciple is  indeed  far  ahead  of  any  practise  of  today. 

There  is  only  one  way  in  which  it  will  ever  be 
lived  up  to.  That  way  is  through  the  earnest, 
intelligent  interest  of  the  peoples  of  the  world 
demanding  it.  If  the  mandatory  reports  fall  upon 
cold  hearers,  if  the  world  turns  its  back,  the  old 
abuses,  the  old  evils,  the  old  competitions  will 
continue  their  ravages  among  these  wards  of 
civilization.  It  will  not  be  enough  to  draw  up  a 
generous  mandate  treaty  or  establish  a  mandate 
commission;  the  spotlight  of  world  interest  and 
responsibility  must  play  fiercely  upon  the  appointed 
trustees  and  each  and  all  of  us  must  feel,  so  far 
as  these  helpless  natives  are  concerned,  that  we 
are  in  a  very  real  sense  our  brother's  keeper. 


134       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Here  surely  is  a  work  which  no  one  nation  can 
adequately  perform  but  which  all  nations  can  unite 
to  do  for  their  mutual  benefit. 


FREEDOM  OF  TRANSIT 

SUPPOSE  some  bright  morning  we  should  wake 
up  to  find  that  Canada  had  put  up  a  great  sign 
across  the  St.  Lawrence  River  reading  "  No  Thor- 
oughfare for  Americans."  This  would  be  neither 
without  precedent  nor  without  certain  legal  justi- 
fication. The  St.  Lawrence  runs  for  hundreds 
of  miles  through  Canadian  territory  and  is  ex- 
clusively under  her  jurisdiction. 

We  should,  of  course,  be  very  hot  about  it, 
feel  deeply  outraged,  talk  of  retaliation,  even  of 
war,  and  we  should  have  a  perfectly  good  right 
to.  To  understand  why,  ask  any  business  man 
of  Buffalo,  Detroit,  Chicago,  or  any  farmer  of  the 
mid-West  what  would  happen  if  this  great  natural 
outlet  for  his  products  were  suddenly  closed  by  an 
alien  power. 

Exactly  this  thing,  however,  nearly  did  happen  » 
years  ago.  In  1823  the  British  passed  bother-  I 
some  regulations  entangling  our  St.  Lawrence 

135 


136      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

trade.  Forthwith  Secretary  of  State  Adams  pro- 
tested to  London  that  if  they  had  a  "  right  of 
sovereignty,"  we  had  "  a  right  of  nature  which 
the  sovereign  right  of  one  nation  cannot  annihi- 
late," namely  "  the  natural  right  of  communicating 
with  the  ocean  by  the  only  outlet  provided  by  na- 
ture." This  failed,  however,  to  appeal  to  British 
humor,  which  immediately  called  the  claim 
"  equally  novel  and  extraordinary." 

Two  years  later  we  struck  a  religious  motif. 
Secretary  Clay  told  London  the  river  must  be 
considered  "  as  a  free  gift  flowing  from  the  bounty 
of  Heaven  intended  for  all  whose  lots  are  cast 
upon  its  borders."  But  even  that  left  England 
cold.  It  was  only  in  1854,  when  Britain  wanted 
certain  privileges  of  free  import,  that  we  were 
able  by  exchange  to  secure  equal  rights  of  naviga- 
tion. 

But  in  1866  these  privileges  were  suspended. 
President  Grant  told  Congress  that  "  an  un- 
friendly disposition  "  had  been  manifested  on  the 
part  of  Canada  to  exclude  Americans  from  the  St. 
Lawrence,  which  constituted  "  a  natural  outlet  to 
the  ocean  for  eight  states  with  an  aggregate  pop- 


Freedom  of  Transit  137 

ulation  of  17,600,000  inhabitants,  and  an  ag- 
gregate tonnage  of  661,367  tons."  This  time  we 
won  out  and  by  the  Treaty  of  Washington  of 
1871,  the  St.  Lawrence  was  declared  forever  free 
and  open  to  Americans. 

Today,  then,  we  use  the  river  on  terms  of  per- 
fect equality  with  Canada,  as  an  essential  link  be- 
tween our  interior  storehouses  and  granaries  and 
the  purchasing  world  overseas.  So  also  with  the 
Rio  Grande  and  Colorado,  our  other  "  interna- 
tional "  rivers.  We  have  struck  bargains  with 
our  neighbors  to  share  and  share  alike  in  these 
great  gifts  of  Nature,  and  to  give  up  something 
of  the  unlimited  right  of  possession  in  order  to 
gain  more  than  is  lost. 

But  Europe  has  found  no  such  simple  solution. 
Her  rivers  are  peculiarly  vagrant  and  wayward, 
winding  their  way  in  and  out  among  the  nations 
and  provocative  of  dispute  ever  since  feudalism 
split  up  the  unified  control  of  the  old  Roman  days. 
The  peoples  of  Europe  have  massed  in  racial 
blocks  along  the  broad  convolutions  of  geography 
so  that  those  in  the  uplands  are  quite  distinct  from 
those  on  the  seaboard.  ,  As  if  by  a  freak  of  Na- 


138       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

ture,  the  people  who  own  the  top  of  a  watercourse 
very  seldom  own  its  outlet. 

Take  the  Rhine,  for  instance.  It  starts  in 
Switzerland,  runs  a  little  way  alongside  France, 
then  a  long  way  through  Germany,  and  finally  a 
little  way  more  through  Holland  into  the  sea. 
Or  the  Danube,  which  starts  in  Germany,  runs 
through  Czecho-Slovakia,  Austria,  Hungary, 
Servia,  Bulgaria  and  Roumania.  So  in  turn  we 
might  name  the  Elbe  nations,  the  Niemcn  nations, 
the  Oder  nations,  the  Scheldt  nations,  each  of 
them  in  a  large  sense  a  single  economic  group 
though  split  into  distinct,  jangling  political  divi- 
sions. 

If  we  nearly  went  to  war  with  Spain  in  the 
early  days  because  she  tried  to  choke  our  outlet 
through  the  Mississippi,  we  should  be  able  to  ap- 
preciate the  chaos  which  might  arise  from  half  a 
dozen  rival  nations  all  scrambling  to  dominate  the 
same  essential  trade  river.  No  power  can  be 
more  merciless  than  that  of  being  able  to  put  up 
a  "  No  Thoroughfare  "  sign  across  another  na- 
tion's commerce.  A  burglar  with  a  pistol  at  your 
head  has  not  more  control  over  you  than  has  one 


Freedom  of  Transit  139 

nation  over  another  if  it  controls  a  seaport  or  river 
essential  to  that  nation.  A  slight  change  in  rates 
or  an  apparently  innocent  traffic  regulation  may 
spell  economic  disaster. 

And  now  take  railroads.  They  are  no  less 
vital  as  arteries  of  commerce,  and  no  less  baffling 
in  their  crisscrossing  of  frontiers.  Indeed  man 
has  probably  outdone  Nature  in  the  complexity  of 
the  problems  he  has  created  about  the  subject  of 
communications.  The  Orient  Express,  for  in- 
stance, starts  in  Switzerland,  runs  through  Austria, 
Servia,  Bulgaria  and  into  Turkey,  crossing  five 
customs  frontiers  at  each  of  which  petty  Balkan 
politicians  may  stand  across  the  path  of  world 
commerce. 

Again  in  this  matter  we  in  the  United  States 
have  been  fortunate.  We  have  created,  or  rather 
evolved,  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission 
which  is  the  greatest  arbiter  of  railroad  difficulties 
in  history.  It  prevents  a  sudden  ban  being  erected 
against  trade  out  of  New  England;  lays  down 
equitable  rates  for  freight  from  Illinois;  and  as- 
sures Kansas  City  adequate  freight  car  facilities. 

Europe,  however,  has  been  too  chopped  up  to 


140       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

evolve  such  a  body.  It  never  has  had  any  guar- 
antee of  just  traffic  arrangements.  Business  has 
stumbled  along  by  the  grace,  or  often  in  spite  of, 
the  statesman,  and  trade  has  often  degenerated 
to  economic  duelling  across  customs  frontiers. 
There  has  been  utterly  lacking  any  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission  to  assure  the  free  flow  of 
trade. 

Take  Czeqho-Slovakia  as  an  instance.  Here  is 
a  wholly  inland  state,  shut  off  from  the  sea  on  all 
sides,  a  nation  utterly  dependent  on  imports  and 
exports,  yet  completely  at  the  mercy  of  semi- 
hostile  states  all  about.  If  Germany,  Austria  and 
Poland  want  to  crush  her,  all  they  need  to  do  is 
impose  a  slight  discriminatory  tax  on  her  freight. 
It  would  not  take  long,  nor  would  it  be  sensa- 
tional. 

If  nations  have  all  too  often  set  themselves  up 
as  international  robbers  along  the  world's  trade 
thoroughfares,  they  will  have  all  the  more  op- 
portunities to  do  so  in  the  future.  The  break-up 
of  the  German,, Austrian,  Turkish  and  Russian 
Empires  has  greatly  increased  the  number  of  polit- 
ical units  and  the  frequency  of  customs  lines. 


Freedom  of  Transit  141 

New  nations,  Poland  and  Czecho-Slovakia,  have 
been  hewn  out;  old  nations,  Austria  and  Hungary, 
have  been  split  apart.  If  it  was  hard  under  the 
old  centralized  governments  to  share  the  highways 
of  Nature  and  of  man  justly,  it  will  be  still  harder 
in  the  future. 

There  is  but  one  way.  A  new  reign  of  law 
must  be  created.  If  not,  new  wars  are  inevitable, 
and  it  has  been  pretty  well  proved  that  if  you  once 
touch  off  the  flame  in  Europe,  it  spreads  world- 
wide. Wars  do  not  arise  solely  out  of  "  politics  " 
as  such.  They  come  of  much  more  humble  origin, 
of  the  homely  things  behind  politics  such  as  com- 
mercial persecution,  economic  imprisonment,  and 
unjust  discrimination.  Jail  a  nation's  commerce, 
saddle  it  with  restrictions,  or  refuse  it  free  outlet 
into  the  world's  trade  stream  and  that  nation  will 
very  shortly  prefer  war  as  a  desperate  way  to 
break  through. 

The  Peace  Conference  realized  this.  One  of 
its  first  commissions  was  for  "  the  international 
regime  of  ports,  waterways  and  railways."  For 
eight  weary  months  it  dealt  in  the  most  homely  of 
economic  difficulties,  of  provisions  for  dredging 


142       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

rivers,  for  universal  couplers  for  freight  cars,  and 
for  various  other  matters  which  few  of  us  would 
associate  with  making  the  world  safe  for  democ- 
racy. At  the  end  it  put  into  the  Treaty  the  fifty 
immensely  detailed,  complicated  pages  of  Chapter 
XII  establishing  international  control  for  such 
great  rivers  as  the  Rhine,  Danube,  Elbe  and 
Niemen,  and  assuming  some  kind  of  outlet  to  the 
sea  for  landlocked  states  such  as  Poland  and 
Czecho-Slovakia. 

Over  these  various  rivers  an  International  Com- 
mission, variously  constituted,  was  established  to 
see  that  channels  were  kept  dredged,  dangerous 
shoals  marked,  and  tolls  kept  equitable.  All  the 
rich  experience  in  pre-war  international  control  of 
the  Rhine  and  the  Danube  Was  called  upon,  and 
safeguards  as  numerous  as  possible  thrown  about 
the  preservation  of  freedom  of  transit  on  these 
great  trade  highways. 

As  to  railroads,  the  victorious  Powers  assured 
to  themselves  freedom  of  transit  across  German 
territory  on  principles  which  would  have  been 
more  just  if  reciprocal.  Constructively,  however, 
the  much  more  important  provision  was  inserted 


Freedom  of  Transit  143 

assuring  Czecho-Slovakia  freedom  of  access  to  the 
sea  in  both  directions.  To  the  north  she  is 
given  a  free  port  in  Stettin  to  facilitate  overseas 
trade,  and  to  the  south  she  is  given  the  right  to 
run  her  own  through  trains  across  Hungary,  Aus- 
tria, Jugo-Slavia  to  Trieste  or  Fiume.  Thus  in  a 
measure  she  is  relieved  of  the  fear  of  economic 
strangulation  which  would  have  made  her  career 
as  a  state  utterly  impossible. 

But  both  for  rivers  and  for  railroads,  difficulties 
were  certain  to  rise.  The  guiding  principles  laid 
down  at  best  were  rudimentary,  and  the  possibili- 
ties of  misunderstanding  and  honest  differences 
manifold.  Certain  temporary  solutions  had  been 
found  for  the  most  glaring  cases  but  a  sweeping 
solution  still  remained  to  be  made. 

So  the  League  of  Nations  was  turned  to.  It  was 
turned  to  in  two  quite  different  ways.  First  it  was 
given  specific  authority  over  specific  details  aiming 
at  freedom  of  communications  in  the  Treaty.  All 
disputes  arising  under  these  detailed  provisions, 
all  technical  difficulties,  and  the  appointment  of 
many  experts  are  referred  to  the  League.  So  also  ' 
is  the  complete  revision  of  all  these  fifty  compli- 


144       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

cated  pages.  The  League  thus  becomes  the  gen- 
eral supervisor  and  arbiter  of  all  these  settlements 
which  have  become  part  of  world  public  law. 

Much  more  than  this,  however,  was  aimed  at 
in  the  second  appeal  to  the  League.  Article 
XXIII,  Paragraph  e,  of  the  Covenant  itself,  is 
all-inclusive.  The  League  is  authorized  "  to 
secure  and  maintain  freedom  of  communications 
and  transit  for  all  members  of  the  League."  If 
that  single  phrase,  expressed  in  all  its  colorless,  un- 
imaginative language,  could  be  carried  out,  it 
would  go  far  towards  establishing  the  League  as 
the  terminator  of  one  of  the  most  fertile  causes 
of  war.  Every  nation  would  be  given  an  equal 
chance  to  compete  in  world  trade  and  cutthroat 
economo-politics  would  disappear. 

With  a  double  program  both  of  great  detail  and 
of  unlimited  broadness  thus  laid  out,  considerable 
administrative  machinery  will  be  necessary.  For- 
tunately, when  the  original  Ports,  Waterways  and 
Railways  Commission  of  the  Peace  Conference 
finished  its  duties,  the  French  asked  the  nations 
represented  on  it,  together  with  the  three  neutral 
nations  of  Spain,  Holland  and  Switzerland,  to 


Freedom  of  Transit  145 

carry  on  the  general  projects  laid  down  and  con- 
sider more  generally  plans  for  the  future.  While 
this  Commission  was  working  through  the  fall  and 
winter,  the  newly  formed  Secretariat  of  the 
League  also  created  a  special  section  to  consider 
transit  problems  from  the  purely  League  point  of 
view. 

So  we  come  to  February  13,  1920.  On  that 
day,  at  the  second  meeting  of  the  Council  of  the 
League,  Baron  Quinones  de  Leon,  Spanish  repre- 
sentative, the  first  neutral  formally  to  participate 
in  this  world  reorganization,  brought  in  a  full  re- 
port on  the  League's  relation  to  freedom  of  com- 
munication. After  elaborating  the  situation  as 
"  of  the  highest  importance,"  he  proposed,  and  the 
Council  unanimously  adopted,  a  plan  whereby  the 
existing  commission  should  be  asked,  first  to  ad- 
vise the  Council  on  the  detailed  duties  involved 
in  the  Peace  Treaty,  second  to  submit  plans  for  a 
permanent  League  organization  to  deal  with  free- 
dom of  communication,  and  third,  to  prepare  four 
draft  conventions  on  Transit,  Ports,  Waterways 
and  Railways. 

So  the   future  stands  out.     Under  the   Peace 


146       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Treaty  a  half  dozen  international  commissions 
will  attempt  to  secure  freedom  of  communication 
on  as  many  key  rivers  of  Europe,  with  all  disputes 
and  revisions  to  be  referred  to  the  League.  Un- 
der the  League  itself  a  Permanent  Commission 
on  Communication  and  Transit  will  be  in  constant 
session,  and  a  general  world  conference  will  be 
called  every  so  often  to  approve  general  conven- 
tions for  submission  to  the  member  nations.  Al- 
ready the  rules,  organization  and  procedure  of 
these  bodies  is  drawn  up,  and  undoubtedly  early 
steps  will  be  taken  to  bring  them  to  fruition. 

The  full  sweep  of  this  work  no  one  today  can 
foresee.  If  this  article  at  present  deals  largely 
with  Europe  it  is  because  it  is  the  European  prob- 
lems which  are  the  most  acute.  Similar  if  less 
flagrant  difficulties,  however,  exist  all  over  the 
world  and  will  generate  friction  increasingly  as 
world  commerce  spreads  out  into  the  new  coun- 
tries. We  have  the  Congo  in  Africa,  which  is 
already  the  cause  of  international  agreements;  we 
have  immense  rivers  in  South  America  and  Asia; 
we  also  have  great  trunk  continental  railroads 
cutting  across  South  America,  Africa  and  Asia. 


Freedom  of  Transit  147 

An  American's  first  query  in  connection  with 
this  aspect  of  the  League  usually  is:  "  How  about 
the  Panama  Canal?"  The  answer  is  simple. 
We  ourselves,  by  a  very  strict  adherence  to 
treaty,  wrote  into  law  exactly  the  principles  which 
it  is  sought  to  apply  to  other  general  waterways. 
If,  therefore,  we  have  nothing  to  fear  as  regards 
the  Panama  Canal,  it  is  equally  true  that  we  have 
much  to  hope  for  as  regards  Suez,  Kiel,  Singapore 
and  Constantinople.  If  we  connived  at  Panama's 
independence  on  the  high  moral  ground  of  build- 
ing a  "  world  highway,"  we  enunciated  and  later 
put  into  practise  the  principles  that  ships  of  all 
nations  should  be  treated  on  an  equality  there. 

Success  to  the  general  principles  behind  freedom 
of  transit  means  removal  of  one  of  the  most  fre- 
quent, yet  most  subtle  causes  of  war.  It  means 
absolute  freedom  of  opportunity  for  all  nations 
to  compete  in  world  trade  without  at  the  same 
time  giving  up  any  just  right.  It  means  an  end  of 
that  system  of  brigandage  which  the  convolutions 
of  Nature  and  the  divergence  of  races  have  made 
inevitable  in  Europe,  and  the  substitution  of  a 
reign  of  impartiality  and  justice  wherever  in  the 


148       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

world  such  problems  arise.  Nations  henceforth, 
if  these  plans  succeed,  would  be  able  to  share  and 
share  alike  in  Nature's  highways  of  trade  with- 
out one  nation  being  able  to  act  as  dog  in  the 
manger  to  another.  One  more  field  of  inter- 
national cooperation  for  international  peace  is 
thereby  made  accessible,  but  it  can  be  fully  utilized 
only  by  the  most  careful,  painstaking,  and  non- 
spectacular  work. 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  LABOR 
ORGANIZATION 

THE  raising  of  labor  standards  throughout  the 
world,  particularly  the  raising  of  the  standards  of 
the  backward  countries  to  compare  with  those  of 
the  more  liberal  and  progressive  countries,  is  one 
of  the  hotly  contested  yet  vitally  important  fields 
of  usefulness  of  the  League  of  Nations.  Already, 
quite  modestly  and  unheralded,  forty  nations  have 
met  in  what  was  probably  the  most  imposing  and 
the  most  productive  labor  conference  ever  held, 
and  an  official  International  Labor  Office  has  been 
created  as  a  central  world  clearing  house  of  labor 
information  and  activity.  Today,  consequently, 
as  part  of  the  League,  a  permanent  labor  organ- 
ization is  actually  functioning  and  a  series  of  an- 
nual world  labor  conferences  has  begun. 

This  is  big  work.  The  world  is  so  close-knit 
today,  and  the  play  of  economic  forces  is  so  inter- 
acting, that  one  part  of  the  world  cannot  be  dis- 

149 


150       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

interested  in  the  labor  standards  of  another.  At 
Washington  recently,  for  instance,  we  witnessed 
the  spectacle  of  French  labor  and  Italian  labor 
and  Dutch  labor  and  Belgian  labor  rising  in  their 
Dlaces  one  after  the  other  to  state  that  the  laboring 
man  in  France  and  Italy  and  Holland  and  Belgium, 
and  the  employers  as  well,  would  never  be  safe 
so  long  as  the  laboring  man  halfway  around  the 
world  in  Japan  is  allowed  to  work  ten,  eleven, 
twelve,  even  thirteen  hours  a  day. 

Who  was  it,  it  is  interesting  to  ask,  who 
most  earnestly  urged  that  Germany  be  admitted  to 
this  conference  at  Washington?  For  the  word 
had  gone  out  that  unless  the  Germans  were  pres- 
ent, European  labor,  at  least,  would  not  be  present 
either,  and  this  at  a  time  when  any  attempt  at 
rapprochement  with  Germany  was  considered  al- 
most treason.  It  was  none  other  than  French 
labor  itself,  French  labor  which  had  suffered  more 
than  anyone  else  from  the  Germans.  This  does 
lot  mean  that  all  of  a  sudden  the  French  were 
Dvercome  with  sympathy  for  the  Germans,  but 
simply  that  they  had  the  perspicacity  to  see  that  if 
ten  or  twelve  hours  a  day  were  worked  on  the 


The  International  Labor  Organization      151 

German  side  of  the  Rhine,  ten  and  twelve  hours  a 
day  would  similarly  by  the  laws  of  competition  be 
worked  on  their  own  side  of  the  Rhine.  And  the 
Germans  were  admitted,  though  unable  to  arrive 
in  time. 

The  world  labor  problem  is  most  intricate. 
Though  the  world  is  split  up  into  neat  little  com- 
partments, either  by  race,  by  climate,  or  by  polit- 
ical frontier,  trade  sweeps  majestically  back  and 
forth,  far  above  these  little  human  divisions,  tak- 
ing products  from  the  cheap-labor  market  into 
the  high-labor  market, .  from  the  savage  tropical 
countries  to  the  most  highly  developed  industrial 
nations,  without  thought  as  to  the  wage  scale  or 
the  labor  conditions  which  lie  at  the  root  of  all 
competition.  Obviously,  there  must  be  some  ap- 
proximation of  standards  if  there  is  not  to  be 
merciless  competition  and  the  consequent  dragging 
down  of  the  higher  standard  countries  to  the  level 
of  the  lower  standard  countries. 

It  is  an  old,  old  realization  that  labor  condi- 
tions in  one  country  vitally  affect  those  in  another. 
Governments  have  taken  some  halting  steps 
towards  uniformity  in  betterment,  but  have  gotten 


152      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

almost  nowhere.  Labor  has  also  tried  through 
various  international  conferences,  and  finally 
through  the  Internationale,  but  here  too  the  results 
have  been  meagre,  as  the  movement  has  become 
more  and  more  one  of  class  hostility  without  the 
backing  of  the  forces  actually  in  power. 

This  brings  us  to  the  Peace  Conference,  when 
unrest  was  seething  beneath  society  as  never  be- 
fore. Millions  of  men  were  being  thrown  back 
from  the  armies  into  industry,  were  asking  if  it 
had  all  been  worth  while,  were  being  tempted 
by  the  baffling  call  of  the  Internationale  and 
the  dreaded  appeal  of  Bolshevism.  Labor  was 
divided,  part  wishing  to  fight  its  way  through 
)urely  political  action,  part  wishing  to  reconstitute 
he  war-shattered  Internationale  as  a  labor  polit- 
cal  machine,  part  headed  for  extremism  and  Bol- 
hevism.  To  meet  this,  the  Internationale  Labor 
Organization  was  formed  as  an  associate  of  the 
League  of  Nations. 

Universal  peace,  says  the  Treaty  "  can  be  estab- 
lished only  if  it  is  based  on  social  justice."  There- 
upon, it  goes  on  to  say  that  "  conditions  of  labor 
exist  involving  such  injustice,  hardship  and  priva- 


The  International  Labor  Organization     153 

tion  to  large  numbers  of  people  as  to  produce  un- 
rest so  great  that  the  peace  and  harmony  of  the 
world  are  imperilled  and  an  improvement  of  these 
conditions  is  urgently  required."  This  is  aiming 
high,  but  it  is  wholly  in  keeping  with  the  spirit 
and  purpose  behind  the  League  of  Nations,  which, 
it  must  always  be  remembered,  seeks  to  amelio- 
rate not  merely  the  political  causes  of  war  but  all 
causes. 

J  There  is  one  vital  factor  about  the  International 
Labor  Office  and  the  annual  International  Labor 
Conference.  It  is  not  a  government  body  en- 
tirely, nor  an  employers'  body,  nor  a  workers' 
body;  it  is  a  composite  of  all  three  together.  Its 
purpose  is  not  to  form  a  focus  point  for  the  the- 
ories of  bureaucrats  about  labor,  or  for  the  class 
interests  of  employers  or  employees,  but  to  make 
a  meeting  place  where  all  three  interests,  the  state, 
capital,  and  labor,  may  come  together  to  discuss 
their  common  problems  from  a  fully  rounded  point 
of  view.  The  Conference  is  therefore  composed 
of  two  representatives  of  government  and  one 
representative  each  of  capital  and  labor  from  I 
every  member  state. 


154       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Radicals  in  the  labor  movement  object  to  this 
scheme  of  organization.  They  claim  that  labor 
will  generally  be  outvoted  by  the  state  and  the 
employers  and  feel  that  if  there  is  to  be  an  inter- 
national Labor  organization,  it  should  be  all  labor 
rather  than  diluted  by  hostile  elements.  This 
viewpoint,  however,  fails  to  take  into  considera- 
tion that  the  government  delegates  often  vote  with 
labor  against  the  employers,  as  indeed  they  did  at 
Washington,  and  that  the  labor  office  will  be  a 
supplement,  far  more  than  a  substitute,  for  the 
Vegular  existing  labor  agencies. 

Secondly,  like  the  other  phases  of  the  League 
of  Nations,  the  Labor  Organization  will  not  have 
decisive  power.  It  can  merely  recommend.  No 
government  is  bound  to  accept  its  recommenda- 
tions, nor  indeed  can  a  recommendation  be  made 
unless  two-thirds  of  the  members  of  the  annual 
Conference  approve.  This  assures,  first,  that  no 
recommendation  can  be  made  unless  it  meets  with 
a  very  strong  endorsement  from  the  three  sides 
interested  in  labor,  and  second  that  even  when 
made  an  individual  state  which  disapproves  a 
recommendation  need  not  accept  it. 


The  International  Labor,  Organization      155 

J  The  only  obligation  resting  upon  the  members 
of  the  League  is  to  present  to  the  proper  body 
within  one  year's  time  the  recommendations  ar- 
rived at  by  the  Conference.  In  other  words, 
every  nation  has  agreed  that  if  two-thirds  of  the 
members  of  an  organization  embracing  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  world  agree  that  a  certain  labor  policy 
should  become  world-wide,  it  will  refer  that 
recommendation  to  the  body  especially  competent 
within  itself  to  handle  the  question. 

This  may  seem  like  very  little  real  power.  In 
reality,  however,  it  is  a  very  great  power.  It  is 
a  power  which  never  before  has  existed.  First,  it 
provides  an  annual  forum  and  a  continuing  body 
for  the  study  of  labor  questions.  Second,  it  en- 
ables those  bodies,  composed  of  experts  as  they 
are,  to  formulate  definite  labor  policies  which  they 
consider  to  represent  the  viewpoint  of  enlightened 
liberalism.  Those  viewpoints  instead  of  being 
mere  pious  wishes  cast  off  into  the  blue  must  be 
submitted  to  the  authorities  in  each  state,  submit- 
ted with  all  the  prestige  and  influence  behind  them 
which  can  not  but  come  from  a  body  representing 
the  world's  moral  judgment.  Few  nations  will 


156       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

ignore  them  without  a  very  sufficient  and  admissi- 
ble reason. 

Fortunately,  guesswork  is  not  necessary  as  re- 
gards the  Labor  Organization.  It  is  possible  to 
judge  of  it  by  actual  accomplishments.  The  first 
International  Labor  Conference  has  already  held 
its  sessions  in  Washington  and  the  permanent  In- 
ternational Labor  Office  is  now  functioning  in  Lon- 
don preparatory  to  the  settlement  of  the  final  seat 
of  the  League.  Both  show  sane,  sober,  substan- 
tial progress  towards  alleviating  some  of  the 
grosser  difficulties  in  the  present  world  economic 
organization. 

The  Washington  Conference  was  successful  be- 
yond expectation.  Forty  nations  were  present, 
belligerents,  neutrals,  Europeans,  South  Amer- 
icans, Asians,  and  new  states  like  Poland,  Czecho- 
slovakia and  Finland  at  their  first  International 
Conference.  No  precedent  existed  for  it  in  labor 
history,  superficially  because  of  its  world-wide 
sweep  but  more  fundamentally  because  its  find- 
ings had  to  be  submitted  to  the  Parliaments  of  the 
world  for  acceptance  or  rejection. 

Agreement  was  reached  on  every  item  submitted 


The  International  Labor  Organization     157 

to  the  Conference  by  the  Peace  Treaty.  This  is 
remarkable  because  the  agenda  required  greater 
advance  than  had  been  made  in  the  whole  history 
of  the  international  labor  movement,  and  that  too 
at  a  Conference  containing  states  both  liberal  and 
backward,  industrial  and  agricultural,  seasoned 
and  newly  born.  In  the  final  voting  the  individual 
interests  of  the  three  groups,  governments,  em- 
ployers and  employees,  were  swept  aside  and  a 
virtually  unanimous  moral  judgment  rendered. 
j  The  results  will,  if  adopted  by  the  nations,  tend 
greatly  to  humanize  labor  conditions,  especially 
in  the  backward  countries.  Without  entering  into 
detail,  they  include  six  draft  conventions  to  be 
signed  as  treaties  and  providing  acceptance  of 
the  eight-hour  day  and  the  forty-eight  hour  week, 
protection  of  women  in  industry  by  forbidding 
night  workVand  allowing  mothers  six  weeks'  rest, 
with  either  state  or  other  aid,  both  before  and 
after  childbirth,]  protection  of  children  in  industry 
by  fixing  14  as  the  minimum  age  of  employment 
and  by  forbidding  night  work  to  those  under  18, 
and  restriction  of  unemployment  by  dissemination 
of  information  and  establishment  of  unemploy 


158       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

ment  offices  and  insurance.  Besides  this  are  nine 
recommendations  seeking  to  make  industry  less 
dangerous  to  health  and  employment  less  preca- 
rious. 

These  recommendations  are  now  before  the 
competent  authorities  of  forty  nations  for  accept- 
ance or  rejection,  backed  as  they  are  by  the  en- 
dorsement of  the  governments,  employers  and 
workers  of  practically  the  whole  world.  No  one 
can  say  what  will  be  their  fate,  but  even  if  ac- 
cepted by  no  nation,  they  nevertheless  mark  the 
highroad  of  world  labor  development  of  today. 
No  liberal  nation  can  fall  below  these  standards; 
many  backward  nations  may  still  look  up  to  them 
as  their  goal  of  achievement. 

Meanwhile,  the  International  J,al|pr  Office, 
which  is  to  be  the  permanent  body,  has  organized. 
Albert  Thomas,  of  France,  selected  as  a  sound, 
progressive  labor  leader  best  calculated  to  rally 
the  support  of  labor  about  the  new  organization, 
has  been  elected  Director-General.  The  Govern- 
ing Body  representing  states  of  the  chief  industrial 
importance  has  held  several  sessions.  The  jour- 


The  International  Labor  Organization      159 

nal  of  labor  facts  and  information  called  for  in  the 
Treaty  has  been  laid  out.  An  international  con- 
ference on  Seamen's  labor  was  convened  at  Genoa 

in  June.     In   a  general  way  the  machinery  has 

•• 
been  set  going,  as  required  in  the  Treaty,  for  "  the 

collection  and  distribution  of  information  on  all 
subjects  relating  to  the  international  adjustments 
of  conditions  of  industrial  life  and  labor,  and  par- 
ticularly the  examination  of  subjects  which  it  is 
proposed  to  bring  before  the  Conference  with  a 
view  to  the  conclusion  of  international  conventions 
and  the  conduct  of  such  special  investigations  as 
may  be  ordered  by  the  Conference." 

Certain  broad  lines  of  progress  are  already 
clear.  First  the  world  will  be  cut  along  new  lines. 
On  the  one  hand  we  will  have  the  nations  of 
Europe,  which  import  raw  materials  and  export 
labor,  and  on  the  other  the  newer  countries  of  the 
Americas  and  South  Africa  which  export  raw  ma- 
terials and  import  labor.  The  Washington  Con- 
ference ran  hard  aground  on  these  questions  when 
it  took  up  the  study  of  unemployment,  for  the 
scarcity  of  raw  materials  is  the  cause  and  emigra- 


160       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

tion  the  effect  of  great  masses  of  men  without 
work.  Unable  to  find  a  solution,  it  passed  both 
questions  on  to  the  Labor  Office. 

So,  too,  we  will  have  the  highly  industrialized 
countries  as  against  the  non-industrialized  coun- 
tries; Europe  and  Asia,  for  instance,  against  Japan 
and  China.  Western  standards  and  Western  pay 
are  much  higher  than  Eastern,  yet  a  sturdy  com- 
petition is  already  developing  between  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  two  systems.  Shall  the  West  reduce 
standards  to  meet  the  East,  or  shall  the  East 
raise  standards  to  meet  the  West  ?  The  beginning 
of  that  question  was  settled  in  Washington,  when 
Japan  accepted  advances  in  her  labor  standards 
which  for  her  are  little  short  of  revolutionary. 
Further  progress  along  the  same  line  will  keep 
all  nations  abreast  in  the  protection  of  labor  and 
in  the  struggle  for  world  trade. 

Such,  then,  is  the  League's  opportunity  in  labor 
protection.  Unquestionably  it  has  already  proved 
that  there  is  a  genuine  place  in  world  policy  for 
cooperation  along  this  line.  The  results  so  far 
achieved  could  have  been  achieved  only  through 
exactly  this  sort  of  machinery,  and  are  obviously 


The  International  Labor  Organization     161 

too  vital  to  be  lost.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the 
League  can  solve  the  age-long  struggle  between 
labor  and  capital,  for  that  struggle  can  be  settled 
only  locally  in  each  large  economic  unit,  such  as 
North  America,  South  America,  Europe,  China, 
India  and  so  forth,  but  rather  that  the  League 
will  be  a  big  factor  in  helping  liberal,  humanitarian 
movements  in  the  labor  field  and  in  protecting 
the  progressive  communities  against  unfair  compe- 
tition from  those  less  advanced. 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  HEALTH 
ORGANIZATION 

4  THE  mightiest  danger  to  all  humanity  since 
the  Deluge  "  is  the  highly  sensational  description 
given  to  the  after-war  scourges  now  sweeping 
Eastern  Europe  and  Asia  which  the  League  of 
Nations  has  been  called  on  to  endeavor  to  check. 
And  the  description  comes,  not  from  a  sensational- 
ist, not  from  a  person  overbalanced  by  sympathy 
or  panic,  but  from  a  hard-headed,  unsensational 
New  York  banker,  head  of  the  American  Red 
Cross,  chairman  of  the  International  Congress  of 
the  League  of  Red  Cross  Societies  which  met  in 
Geneva  in  March,  in  short,  Henry  P.  Davison. 

Mr.  Davison  does  not  conceal  his  alarm  over 
the  world's  health  a  year  and  a  half  after  the 
armistice.  The  League  of  Red  Cross  Societies,  he 
says,  is  doing  everything  in  its  power,  but  "  it  is 
impossible  to  check  this  danger  by  private  means. 
It  is  a  matter  to  be  handled  by  governments. 

162 


The  International  Health  Organization     163 

They  handled  the  war  and  this  is  worse  than 
war."  So  again  the  League  is  appealed  to,  ap- 
pealed to  for  a  form  of  international  cooperation 
quite  different  from  the  political  work  so  often 
exclusively  associated  with  it,  yet  probably  far 
more  vital  and  hopeful. 

What  new  is  to  be  said  about  after-war  condi- 
tions? The  world  is  surfeited  with  horrors.  Its 
sympathies  and  emotions  are  worn  threadbare. 
It  reads  of  plagues  and  diseases  almost  dumbly. 
Every  feeling  which  can  be  drawn  upon  has  been 
drawn  upon.  That  more  people  are  dying  daily 
in  the  after-war  than  during  the  war,  dying  slow, 
anguishing  deaths,  leaves  us  cold.  Public  opinion 
has  fallen  back  exhausted  and  insensate.  It  can 
not  assimilate  more. 

Yet  it  must.  Mr.  Balfour,  at  the  time  presi- 
dent of  the  Council  of  the  League  of  Nations, 
summarized  the  world's  plight  thus  in  a  letter  to 
Mr.  Davison :  "  The  ravages  inflicted  by  disease 
upon  the  war-worn  and  underfed  populations  of 
Central  Europe,  to  say  nothing  of  regions  further 
east,  have  reached  appalling  proportions.  Men, 
women  and  children  are  dying  by  thousands,  and 


164      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

over  vast  and  civilized  areas  there  are  neither 
medical  appliances  nor  medical  skill  sufficient  to 
cope  with  the  horrors  by  which  we  are  faced  .  .  . 
for  dealing  with  a  calamity  which,  following  hard 
on  war,  seems  almost  worse  than  war  itself." 

Let  no  one  think  this  is  a  local  problem  only. 
Quite  the  contrary,  it  is  a  world  problem.  Dis- 
ease knows  no  frontiers.  The  political  divisions 
which  man  has  created  are  non-existent  in  its  for- 
ward march.  It  sweeps  on,  regardless  of  the 
conventional  ports  of  entry  and  of  man-made  reg- 
ulations. Trains  in  their  transcontinental  jour- 
neys, ships  in  their  voyages  about  the  Seven  Seas, 
even  the  atmosphere  itself  in  its  restless  currents, 
serve  as  the  medium  of  travel  by  which  the  scourge 
of  one  section  may  reach  the  health  of  another. 

Disease  and  sickness  are  world-wide.  Both 
their  cause  and  their  remedy  are  the  same  in  one 
place  as  in  another.  The  lessons  learned  in  the 
tragedy,  say,  of  Poland,  may  well  be  the  salvation 
of  the  United  States.  The  gains  of  science  in  its 
ceaseless  struggle  amidst  the  ravages  of  a  disease 
must  be  instantly  reported  to  sections  still  only 
threatened.  What  above  all  is  needed  is  a  means 


The  International  Health  Organization      165 

first  to  universalize  new  methods  of  prevention 
and  cure  the  moment  they  become  discovered,  and 
second  to  assure  the  cooperation  of  all  states  in 
a  concerted  attack  upon  an  incipient  plague. 

America  can  not  claim  isolation  from  this 
world  problem.  To  again  quote  Mr.  Davison, 
"  America  is  just  as  unsafe  as  Europe  from 
typhus  and  the  white  plague  now  spreading  over 
the  world  with  lightning  rapidity."  Every  ship 
that  comes  to  our  shores,  every  immigrant  that 
enters  our  portals,  every  home-coming  American 
traveler  indeed,  may  bring  the  dread  disease.  We 
have  only  one  method  of  insurance,  namely  to  co- 
operate with  other  nations  in  stamping  disease  out 
at  its  starting  point  and  in  spreading  knowledge  of 
disease  prevention  and  insulation. 

It  is  not  enough  that  each  nation  of  itself  have 
good  health  laws  and  protective  machinery.  All 
its  good  efforts  may  easily  be  vitiated  by  the  care- 
lessness of  another  state  in  allowing  a  plague  to 
generate  which  may  sweep  over  half  the  world 
before  it  is  beaten  down.  The  danger  of  con- 
tagion can  of  course  be  reduced,  but  it  can  never 
be  avoided.  The  great  scourges  which  have  in 


1 66       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

the  past  ravaged  the  world  have  done  so  because 
they  suddenly  became  too  powerful  for  local  au- 
thorities to  handle  and  set  out  for  wider  fields  of 
conquest. 

The  framers  of  the  Covenant  of  the  League 
realized  this,  even  in  the  press  of  their  other  far 
more  contentious  labors.  Twice  in  the  Covenant 
they  signalized  it.  Under  Article  XXIII  the 
members  of  the  League  agree  "  to  take  steps  in 
matters  of  international  concern  for  the  preven- 
tion and  control  of  disease  "  and  under  Article 
XXV  "  to  encourage  and  promote  the  establish- 
ment and  cooperation  of  duly  authorized  voluntary 
national  Red  Cross  organizations  having  as  pur- 
poses the  improvement  of  health,  the  prevention 
of  disease,  and  the  mitigation  of  suffering  through- 
out the  world."  It  is  interesting  that  of  all  the 
special  activities  which  sought  recognition  when 
the  Covenant  was  being  framed,  educational 
bodies,  international  associations,  farmers'  move- 
ments, the  Red  Cross  alone  secured  mention. 

This  recognition  immediately  offered  a  chal- 
lenge to  those  engaged  in  organizing  the  League. 
What,  in  detail,  did  these  two  very  general 


The  International  Health  Organization     167 

phrases  mean?  What  sort  of  duties  did  they  im- 
pose upon  the  League?  How  were  those  duties 
to  be  translated  into  accomplishment?  For  sev- 
eral months  following  the  signing  of  the  Treaty 
these  questions  were  threshed  out  till  finally  a 
scheme  of  organization  and  usefulness  was  fully 
evolved.  Consequently  at  the  first  real  business 
meeting  of  the  Council  of  the  League  in  London 
on  February  13,  M.  da  Cunha,  who  interestingly 
enough  is  a  Brazilian  representative  on  the  Coun- 
cil, was  able  to  ask  specific  authority  to  go  ahead. 
"  If  there  is  a  field  of  action,"  he  said,  "  in 
which  the  League  of  Nations  can  bring  immediate 
relief  to  nations  and  one  which  will  affect  indi- 
viduals in  their  personal  and  family  lives,  it  is  the 
field  of  social  hygiene,  in  the  most  liberal  sense 
of  the  word.  Health  measures  are  essentially  in- 
ternational measures,  whether  it  be  a  question  of 
adopting  preventive  or  defensive  means  to  combat 
contagious  or  epidemic  disease,  or  of  populariz- 
ing methods  of  cure  and  treatment.  Without  sol- 
idarity and  an  effective  understanding  between 
nations,  any  national  organization,  however  per- 
fect in  itself,  will  be  insufficient. 


1 68       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

"  What  is  necessary  is  a  permanent  organiza- 
tion capable  of  coordinating,  and  even  of  institut- 
ing, the  necessary  statistics  and  keeping  them  up  to 
date.  This  organization  should  follow  scientific 
research  concerning  public  health  and  circulate  its 
discoveries;  it  should  coordinate  and  assist  the  ac- 
tion of  organizations  already  existing,  such  as  the 
Red  Cross  Societies,  the  International  Bureau  of 
Public  Health,  and  other  similar  institutions;  it 
should  not  only  organize  periodical  and  interna- 
tional conferences  of  scholars  and  experts  but 
should  call  conferences  similar  to  the  Labor  Con- 
ference; finally  by  a  systematic  propaganda  it 
should  impress  on  public  opinion  the  necessity  of 
individual  and  collective  rules  and  habits  of  health. 
Otherwise  all  conventions  will  be  futile." 

This  statement  was  unanimously  approved  by 
the  Council  and  invitations  immediately  issued  for 
an  organizing  Conference  to  be  held  in  London 
in  April.  Even  before  this  Conference  could 
come  together,  however,  the  typhus  situation  in 
Poland  had  become  so  desperate  that  Mr.  Balfour, 
at  a  special  meeting  of  the  Council  in  Paris  on 
March  13,  stated  that  it  must  "  be  taken  in  hand 


The  International  Health  Organization      169 

at  the  earliest  possible  moment,  not  merely  in  the 
interests  of  the  Polish  people  but  for  the  protec- 
tion of  Europe  as  a  whole.  The  matter  is  of  such 
magnitude  and  bears  on  the  welfare  of  so  many 
countries  that  it  seems  eminently  one  with  which 
the  League  of  Nations  should  deal."  The 
Health  Bureau,  like  many  other  parts  of  the 
League,  thus  became  confronted  with  an  immedi- 
ate and  specific  task  even  before  it  had  itself  come 
into  being. 

As  with  other  forms  of  international  coopera- 
tion there  is  a  strong  but  little  known  foundation 
on  which  to  build  the  new  structure.     Indeed  co- 
operative efforts  for  the  protection  of  health  date 
back  as   far  as  the  middle   of  the  last  century. 
The  first  seeds  were  planted  at  a  Diplomatic  Con- 1 
ference  in  Paris  in  1851,  when  the  First  Interna-j 
tional  Sanitary  Convention  dealing  with  the  pre- 
vention of  cholera,  plague  and  yellow  fever  was 
presented  to  the  world  through  Napoleon  III. 

Then  came  the  sensational  development  of  the 
steamship,  entailing  a  great  increase  in  the  ra- 
pidity of  travel,  not  only  of  men  but  of  disease. 
Especially  was  this  noticeable  among  the  pil- 


170       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

grims  going  to  Mecca.  So,  following  a  serious 
outbreak  of  cholera  in  1866,  an  International  San- 
itary Conference  was  called,  largely  by  Turkey 
and  Egypt,  resulting  in  the  formation  of  the  Con- 
sular Commission  at  Constantinople. 

This  cooperation,  born  in  a  crisis  of  peculiar 
gravity,  grew  more  and  more  general  as  bounda- 
ries were  brought  closer  and  closer  together.  A 
series  of  special  meetings  were  held  during  the 
years,  till  finally  in  1907,  as  a  result  of  the  Rome 
Conference,  the  spasmodic  nature  of  the  work 
was  overcome  and  a  permanent,  continuing  body 
created  under  the  name  of  the  Office  International 
d'Hygiene  Publique. 

Private  initiative  was  equally  active  during  this 
time.  In  1863  the  first  International  Congress  of 
the  Red  Cross  Societies  was  held  in  Geneva  and 
the  so-called  Geneva  Convention,  on  which  the 
whole  treatment  of  sick  and  wounded  in  war  is 
based,  was  drawn  up.  During  the  World  War 
this  organization  proved  almost  indispensable,  as 
its  neutral  character  enabled  it  to  keep  a  record 
of  prisoners  which  would  have  been  possible  in 
no  other  way. 


The  International  Health  Organization      171 

Then  arose  the  fearful  sufferings  of  the  after- 
war  period.  The  various  national  Red  Cross 
Societies  realized  what  a  field  lay  open  to  them. 
Consequently  they  came  together,  first  at  Cannes 
and  then  at  Paris,  to  widen  their  charters  for 
peace-time  work.  The  inevitable  outcome  was  \ 
the  League  of  Red  Cross  Societies,  which  in 
March,  1920,  held  its  first  General  Council  meet- 
ing at  Geneva  to  discuss  the  after-war  scourges 
which  were  then  sweeping  the  world. 

Such,  then,  was  the  foundation  on  which  the 
League  of  Nations  could  build.  Powerful  or- 
ganizations, both  official  and  private,  were  ready 
at  hand,  while  at  the  same  time  the  crisis  was 
greater  than  ever  before  in  history.  As  it  hap- 
pened, moreover,  there  was  great  need  for  just  the 
elements  of  strength  which  the  League  could 
bring.  The  official  organization  was  rather  re- 
stricted in  membership  and  too  advisory  in  char- 
acter, while  the  Red  Cross  lacked  much  of  the 
power  of  a  governmental  agency.  The  League, 
therefore,  offered  the  opportunity  to  thread  to- 
gether these  different  agencies,  combining  the 
strength  of  all,  widening  the  membership  to  in- 


172       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

elude  the  world,  assuring  complete  financial  and 
governmental  support,  and  yet  preserving  the 
identity  of  the  constituent  bodies. 

The  structure  of  the  International  Health  Or- 
ganization will  follow  closely  that  of  the  Interna- 
tional Labor  Organization.  There  will  be  first  a 
permanent  body  called  the  International  Health 
Office,  situated  at  the  seat  of  the  League  and  in 
charge  of  a  medical  secretary  who  shall  have 
direct  access  to  the  Secretary-General  of  the 
League  and  the  right  to  communicate  directly  with 
the  various  governments  members  of  the  organi- 
zation. The  pffice  will  of  course  conduct  the  day- 
by-day  routine  of  the  Organization,  make  investi- 
gations and  prepare  the  periodic  Conferences. 

Second  will  be  the  Executive  Meeting  corre- 
sponding to  the  Governing  Body  of  the  Labor 
Conference  and  consisting  of  perhaps  ten  mem- 
)ers,  including  a  representative  of  both  the  League 
of  Red  Cross  Societies  and  the  International  La- 
>or  Organization.  This  committee  is  expected 
to  meet  at  least  four  times  a  year,  when  it  will  be 
charged  especially  with  the  drafting  or  the  revi- 
sion of  international  health  conventions. 


The  International  Health  Organization      173 

Third  and  last  will  be  the  General  Committee 
which  will  in  effect  be  an  annual  conference  of  all 
states  members  of  the  Organization.  Like  the 
International  Labor  Conference  it  will  be  the 
final  body  for  approval  of  all  draft  Conventions 
and  recommendations,  which  must  be  supported 
by  a  two-thirds  vote  before  they  can  be  submitted 
for  the  approval  or  rejection  of  the  individual 
states  members  of  the  League.  With  an  agenda 
carefully  prepared  beforehand  and  a  representa- 
tion from  nearly  every  nation  in  the  world,  this 
body  will  have  greater  authority  than  any  health 
conference  ever  held,  while  at  the  same  time  it 
will  not  impair  the  sovereignty  of  any  individual 
nation  because  none  of  its  findings  become  binding 
until  accepted  by  the  proper  national  authorities. 

The    Health    Organization   will    work    in    the  I 
closest  harmony  with  the  International  Bureau  of  j 
Public  Health  and  with  the  League  of  Red  Cross  \ 
Societies.     It  will  not  in  any  sense  seek  to  replace 
these  bodies;  indeed  it  will  count  upon  them  for 
most    effective    support.     In    the    overwhelming 
battle  against  disease  there  is  a  place  for  every 
possible  agency,  both  official  and  private,  for  pri- 


174      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

vate  initiative  and  energy  can  most  effectively 
combine  with  government  facilities,  information 
and  funds. 

Thus  the  world's  healing  and  protective  forces 
will  be  marshalled  together  in  the  great  combat 
against  disease  in  a  way  that  has  never  before  been 
possible.  A  central  nerve  system  of  information 
and  action  in  international  health  matters  will  be 
provided;  the  health  authorities  in  the  various 
countries  will  be  brought  into  closer  touch;  infor- 
mation will  be  exchanged  much  more  rapidly  in 
case  of  emergency,  and  quick,  concerted  action  will 
be  rendered  possible  where  before  it  has  been 
most  haphazard.  If  the  League  can  carry  out 
even  in  a  small  way  the  promise  contained  in  this 
field  of  activity,  if  it  can  reduce  the  plagues  and 
scourges  which  periodically  ravage  the  world,  it 
will  fulfill  one  of  the  greatest  missions  which  lie 
before  it. 


ECONOMIC  COOPERATION 

THE  greatest  penalty  ever  placed  before  a  \ 
treaty-breaking  state  lies  in  the  economic  boycott  j 
provided  in  the  League  of  Nations  Covenant. 
It  means  complete  severance  from  the  rest  of  the 
civilized  world.  It  is  an  open,  fully  foreseeable, 
wholly  measurable  penalty  awaiting  any  state 
which  violates  the  terms  of  its  fundamental  rela- 
tionship with  the  other  nations.  If  it  is  charged 
that  the  League  is  powerless  because  of  lack  of 
actual  military  or  naval  forces,  it  may  easily  be  re- 
torted that  it  possesses  against  a  Covenant-break- 
ing state  a  force  far  more  subtle  and  more  power- 
ful, the  force  of  economic  strangulation. 

Article  XVI  providers  that  "  should  any  mem- 
ber of  the  League  resort  to  war  in  disregard  of 
its  Covenants,  all  other  members  of  the  League 
undertake  immediately  to  subject  it  to  the  sever- 
ance of  all  trade  or  financial  relations  and  the  pro- 
hibition of  all  financial,  commercial,  or  personal  in- 
tercourse between  the  nationals  of  the  Covenant- 


176       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

breaking  state  and  the  nationals  of  any  other  state, 
whether  a  member  of  the  League  or  not." 

Had  this  provision  been  in  operation  in  1914, 
Germany  would  long  have  hesitated  to  convert  her 
solemn  obligation  of  the  Belgian  Treaty  into  a 
mere  "  scrap  of  paper."  She  would  have  seen 
arrayed  against  her  an  economic  barrier  including 
not  only  France  and  Russia,  her  admitted  ene- 
mies, but  also  neutral  Holland  and  Denmark, 
which  long  served  as  ports  of  entry  for  her  war 
supplies.  In  the  face  of  this  certainty,  it  is 
doubtful  indeed  if,  with  the  margin  between  war 
and  peace  so  slight,  she  would  have  gambled  on 
hostilities. 

This  obligation  to  impose  an  economic  boycott 
against  a  state  violating  the  Covenant  is  definite 
and  final;  it  is  not  optional  or  voluntary.  The 
members  of  the  League  have  freely  assumed  the 
responsibility;  indeed  they  could  hardly  have  done 
less  if  they  felt  any  respect  for  the  document  they 
signed.  The  moment  a  nation  violates  the  Cov- 
enant, each  and  every  member  of  the  League 
should  take  immediate  action,  on  its  own  initia- 
tive, to  cease  all  trade  with  that  nation. 


Economic  Cooperation  177 

The  automatic  nature  of  the  boycott  is  note- 
worthy. It  differs  totally,  for  instance,  from  the 
military  responsibility  of  member  states,  if  there 
be  any.  For,  in  case  the  Council  should  decide 
military  action  to  be  necessary,  it  has  power  only 
to  "  recommend  "  to  the  governments  what  force 
if  any  each  should  contribute.  No  obligation 
would  rest  upon  any  member  state  to  accept  this 
recommendation.  With  the  boycott,  however,  a 
very  real  obligation  does  rest  upon  each  state,  for 
it  has  been  definitely  agreed  beforehand  that  in 
certain  eventualities  such  action  will  follow  auto- 
matically. 

This  action  would  in  practise  be  cooperative. 
While  the  prime  responsibility  would  rest  on  each 
individual  state,  the  effective  execution  would 
nevertheless  require  united  action.  Consequently, 
some  kind  of  permanent  body  must  be  established 
to  work  out  plans  to  give  effect  to  this  weapon  the 
moment  an  emergency  arises. 

If  this  power  of  the  League  may  be  called 
purely  a  police  power  without  constructive  advan- 
tages, there  are  other  economic  duties  of  a  most 
constructive  nature.  The  exact  extent  of  those 


178       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

duties  is  interpreted  so  variously  among  different 
schools  of  thought  at  this  moment  of  world  up- 
heaval that  it  is  difficult  to  lay  out  an  absolutely 
definite  program. 

Let  us,  therefore,  start  with  a  single  positive 
example.  During  the  winter  of  1919-1920  the 
world  economic  situation  became  steadily  more 
and  more  desperate.  Exchange  collapsed;  indus- 
tries remained  stagnant;  vast  numbers  of  men 
were  out  of  work;  and  hunger  and  disease  began 
to  spread  broadcast  in  Europe  till  a  total  collapse 
of  the  existing  social  structure  was  feared  even  in 
the  most  conservative  circles.  The  details  require 
no  repetition. 

The  first  independent  action  ever  taken  by  the 
League  of  Nations  occurred  at  just  this  moment, 
when  as  it  happened  the  second  meeting  of  the 
Council  was  being  held  in  London.  Up  to  that 
time  the  Council  had  rubber-stamped  the  various 
organization  plans  prepared  by  the  Secretariat 
and  carried  out  only  the  business  actually  placed 
before  it.  Consequently  the  League  had  hardly 
appeared  to  take  on  a  life  of  its  own. 

As  the  public  was  waiting  for  the  members  of 


Economic  Cooperation  179 

the  Council  to  assemble  for  the  public  session  of 
February  13,  they  could  look  through  the  glass 
doors  into  the  antechamber  where  the  various 
officials  were  conversing.  Suddenly  a  degree  of 
life  and  vitality  which  had  not  before  been  mani- 
fest seemed  to  come  over  them,  and  an  intense, 
informal  discussion  took  place.  After  an  appre- 
ciable delay,  the  Council  members  took  their  seats 
in  the  main  room  and  the  session  opened. 

At  its  conclusion,  Mr.  Balfour,  in  remarks  cov- 
ering less  than  a  printed  page,  announced  that 
the  Council  had  decided  to  call  an  International 
Financial  Conference  "  with  a  view  to  studying 
the  financial  crisis  and  to  looking  for  a  means  of 
remedying  it  and  of  mitigating  the  dangerous  con- 
sequences arising  from  it."  In  other  words,  al- 
most on  the  spur  of  the  moment  and  without  the 
usual  disturbance  created  in  the  Chancelleries  of 
the  world  by  a  call  to  an  international  conference 
the  nations  were  called  together  to  discuss  the 
most  serious  of  financial  problems.  It  is  signifi- 
cant that  this  was  the  first  original  action  taken 
by  the  Council  of  the  League. 

Immediately  afterwards  an  Organizing  Com- 


180       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

mittee  was  appointed  and  a  very  inclusive  ques- 
tionnaire, backed  by  all  the  prestige  of  the  League, 
sent  to  all  governments  asking  details  of  their  do- 
mestic and  foreign  debt,  loans  to  other  nations, 
foreign  trade  by  country  and  by  value,  gold  and 
silver  holdings,  bank  deposits,  bank  note  circu- 
lation, and  laws  or  decrees  affecting  foreign  ex- 
Change.  Brussels  was  chosen  as  the  place  of  meet- 
ing and  a  mass  of  statistical  material  gathered 
f  which  showed  the  financial  state  of  the  world  as 
it  had  never  been  shown  before. 

The  actual  accomplishments  of  this  individual 
conference  are  not  the  important  consideration 
now.  The  vital  fact  is  that  the  machinery  existed 
to  call  the  conference  at  all.  Many  evils  will 
crop  up  in  the  economic  field  in  future  years 
which  might  well  fester  into  wars  unless  some 
such  method  as  this  existed  to  get  the  nations 
into  conference  upon  them.  With  the  League  in 
existence  we  may  reasonably  expect  a  succession 
of  conferences  on  matters  of  world  economic  im- 
port which  will  be  called  with  just  as  little  cere- 
monial and  just  as  business-like  precision  as  the 
Brussels  Conference. 


Economic  Cooperation  181 

This  opens  up  the  whole  question  of  interna- 
tional economic  information.  That,  after  all, 
will  be  the  main  result  of  such  international  gath- 
erings, for  apart  from  collecting  and  systematiz- 
ing information  and  submitting  recommendations, 
they  will  have  no  binding  force  upon  any  state  rep- 
resented. They  will  serve  in  a  large  sense  as  a 
looking-glass  in  which  the  world  can  study  its 
actual  condition  in  the  hope  that  with  knowledge 
will  come  wise  action. 

The  preparation  of  statistics,  therefore,  as- 
sumes a  very  vital  place  in  this  program. 
Months  ago,  as  it  happens,  the  League  took  action 
in  this  matter.  In  August,  1919,  a  conference  of 
statisticians  was  held  in  London  at  League  head- 
quarters, even  before  the  League  had  been  of- 
ficially created,  to  discuss  the  possibility  of  coor- 
dination of  the  various  international  statistical 
commissions  already  at  work. 

There  is,  for  instance,  for  agricultural  statis- 
tics, the  International  Institute  of  Agriculture  at 
Rome;  for  labor  statistics  the  International  Labor 
Office,  for  demographic  statistics,  the  Permanent 
Bureau  of  the  International  Institute  of  Statistics 


1 82       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

at  The  Hague,  and  the  International  Bureau  of 
Commercial  Statistics  at  Brussels.  All  these 
bodies  are  fulfilling  most  useful  missions,  showing 
the  world  just  where  it  stands  in  certain  vital 
questions. 

Representatives  of  these  bodies  agreed  that 
their  activities  might  well  be  coordinated  and  that, 
without  losing  any  of  their  own  individuality,  they 
might  gain  all  the  prestige  and  authority  which 
association  with  the  League  would  give  them. 
Consequently  a  memorandum  was  submitted  to  the 
Council  meeting  at  Rome  in  May,  1920,  calling 
for  appointment  of  an  International  Committee 
of  Statisticians  to  draw  up  complete  plans  for  the 
final  approval  of  the  Assembly. 

Coordination  of  international  statistics  is  an- 
other of  those  very  humble  and  unspectacular  but 
vitally  important  offices  which  the  League  can 
perform  which  no  other  organization  has  ever 
been  able  to  perform.  It  is  not  a  matter  that 
will  reach  the  front  page  of  the  newspapers;  in- 
deed it  is  something  which  the  ordinary  person 
will  pass  over  with  but  slight  interest;  but  its  ef- 
fect will  be  to  provide  the  information  whereby 


Economic  Cooperation  183 

the  leaders  of  the  world  may  know  exactly  the 
state  of  the  world  and  be  able  to  act  with  intelli- 
gent judgment. 

Many  other  fields  of  opportunity  in  the  eco- 
nomic sphere  have  already  been  signalized  in  other 
chapters.  There  is,  for  instance,  the  guarantee 
of  freedom  of  communications  and  transit  which 
affect  many  international  ports,  waterways  and 
railways;  the  reduction  of  armaments  especially 
through  removing  the  element  of  private  profit  in 
their  manufacture;  the  preservation  of  the  open 
door  of  equal  commercial  opportunity  in  territo- 
ries under  mandate;  and  certain  specific  duties  in 
the  peace  treaties.  All  these  have  been  discussed 
in  full. 

Opportunities  for  still  wider  usefulness  are  seen 
by  many.  They  argue,  and  argue  with  much  jus- 
tice, that  if  the  economic  demands  of  the  war 
could  be  met  only  by  unified  control  of  the  more 
vital  products,  so  the  economic  demands  of  the 
reconstruction  period  can  similarly  be  met  most 
effectively  by  united  action.  While  the  terrible 
stress  of  hostilities  has  relaxed,  nevertheless,  the 
problems  of  healing  are  hardly  less  difficult. 


184      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

The  world's  difficulty  today  is  the  proper  dis- 
tribution of  raw  materials  to  get  factories  re- 
started and  men  back  to  work.  There  is  no 
cotton  for  the  mills  of  Poland;  no  coal  for  many 
of  the  factories  of  Italy;  no  tropical  and  other 
materials  to  allow  German  factories  to  start  ex- 
portation to  pay  their  reparations.  Consequently, 
the  world,  instead  of  getting  better,  gets  steadily 
worse. 

Moreover,  certain  basic  commodities  are  under 
a  stringent  kind  of  control  which  every  student 
of  the  subject  realizes  harbors  danger.  Wheat, 
for  instance,  is  a  government  export  monopoly  in 
the  United  States,  Russia  and  Australia,  and  a 
government  buying  monopoly  in  Great  Britain, 
France,  Italy,  Belgium,  Germany  and  other  states. 
Coal  is  exported  from  Great  Britain,  the  chief 
country  of  origin,  only  through  the  government, 
and  imported  into  France  and  Italy  in  the  same 
way.  Petroleum  products  are  in  the  hands  of 
two  great  private  international  trusts,  the  Stand- 
ard Oil  Company  of  America  and  the  Anglo- 
Dutch  Petroleum  Combination. 

These  three  fundamental  commodities,  any  one 


- 


Economic  Cooperation  185 

of  which  is  vital  enough  to  the  well-being  of  the 
world  to  upset  its  whole  economic  structure,  are 
thus  under  a  highly  centralized  control  different 
from  the  unified  control  of  war  times  and  unmind- 
ful of  the  free  play  of  the  laws  of  competition. 
Out  of  such  an  undirected  system  national  antag- 
onisms are  almost  sure  to  arise. 

The  problems  both  of  reconstruction  and  of 
direction  of  the  world's  surplus  raw  materials 
might  well  come  before  the  League  of  Nations  for 
discussion,  for  either  of  them,  if  mishandled, 
would  be  sufficient  to  send  the  world  into  a  new 
era  of  suffering.  There  will,  of  course,  be  self- 
ish interests  which  will  oppose  any  such  discus- 
sion, even  if  its  only  result  is  to  bring  the  facts 
into  the  light  of  day  for  the  intelligent  opinion  of 
the  world  to  focus  upon. 

The  best  method  of  accomplishing  the  resultV 
sought  is  generally  felt  to  have  the  Supreme  Eco-\ 
nomic   Council   incorporated  within  the  League.  | 
That  Council  has  now  lost  the  mandatory  power  ' 
which  in  practise  it  possessed  in  the  days  of  unified 
economic   command,   and  has  become   largely  a 
body  of  report  and  recommendation.     It  has  a 


1 86      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

mass  of  information  and  data  at  its  disposal  and 
also  a  valuable  personnel.  It  is  most  highly 
probable  that  what  remains  of  its  work  will  be 
taken  over  by  the  League  as  one  of  its  most  essen- 
tial functions. 

Nevertheless,  these  plans  have  not  yet  been 
fully  matured  owing  to  the  constantly  shifting  na- 
ture of  the  whole  world  economic  foundation. 
But  that  the  League  must,  if  it  is  to  prevent  the 
growth  of  hostile  feeling  between  peoples,  de- 
velop a  highly  efficient  section  of  economic  inves- 
tigation and  report  is  admitted  on  all  sides. 
Thus,  with  a  general  section  of  this  nature  to  rec- 
ommend policies,  with  an  International  Statistical 
Commission  to  prepare  data,  and  with  the  power 
of  economic  boycott  of  a  nation  violating  the  Cov- 
enant ever  at  hand,  the  League  is  certain  to  play 
a  helpful  part  in  the  day-to-day  economic  devel- 
opment of  the  world  and  a  dominating  part  in 
the  moment  of  supreme  crisis. 


OPEN  DIPLOMACY 

WILL  the  League  of  Nations  be  able  to  de- 
stroy secret  diplomacy  and  establish  open  diplo- 
macy? 

Of  all  the  questions  before  the  League,  this  is 
far  and  away  the  greatest.  If  international  re- 
lations can  be  made  an  open  book  for  all  the 
world  to  read,  if  the  plots  and  machinations  which 
have  been  bred  in  secrecy  can  be  prevented,  if  the 
vast  amount  of  misunderstanding,  distrust  and 
even  deliberate  falsehood  which  have  poisoned  the 
past  relationships  between  states  can  be  done  away 
with,  think  what  an  advance  this  will  mean  to- 
wards the  prevention  of  future  wars. 

Of  all  the  questions  before  the  League,  this 
is  also  far  and  away  the  closest  to  the  man  on 
the  street.  In  a  sense  it  is  the  key  question  to 
the  whole  system  of  international  relationships. 
On  it  will  depend  your  knowledge  and  mine  of 
what  is  going  on  in  the  world  about  us.  On  it 

187 


1 88      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

will  depend  whether  you  and  I  and  our  neighbors 
are  able  to  form  an  intelligent  opinion  of  the  big 
issues  of  the  world  which  at  any  minute  may 
sweep  into  our  quiet  little  homes  and  demand 
heavy  taxes  or  even  military  service. 

The  question  of  League  publicity  is  our  ques- 
tion, the  question  of  each  and  all  of  us.  We  can- 
not entrust  it  to  any  body  of  men  to  settle  for  us; 
we  cannot  allow  it  to  go  by  default;  we  must  in 
our  own  interest  watch  over  it,  criticise  it,  even 
force  it.  For  it  is  our  right  to  understand  the 
forces  that  are  operating  between  the  peoples  of 
the  world  and  to  know  what  is  being  done  by  the 
League  which  we  have  created. 

This  is  not  so  simple  as  it  appears.  The  forces 
of  secrecy  and  silence  are  much  more  powerful 
than  supposed.  There  are  great  interests  to  be 
served  and  unseen  ends  to  be  accomplished. 
Moreover,  there  are  moments  of  stress  and  emer- 
gency when  secrecy  seems  almost  essential,  when 
men  hold  their  breath  in  the  hope  that  some  set- 
tlement may  be  reached  short  of  a  public  out- 
burst. Full  publicity  not  only  threatens  selfish 
interests,  but  also  requires  a  moral  courage  and 


Open  Diplomacy  189 

fearlessness   which   only   the    great    among   men 
possess. 

It  may  unhesitatingly  be  said  that  the  League  j 
of  Nations  marks  the  greatest  stride  ever  made 
towards  the  goal  of  open  diplomacy.     That  is  a  • 
bold  and  an  unqualified  statement  written  without  J 
fear  of  disproof.     It  is  a  statement  which  should 
be  weighed  carefully  by  the  man  on  the  street  who 
is  utterly  through  with  the  previous  methods  of 
diplomacy  and  who  feels  that  at  all  costs  secrecy 
must  be  eliminated. 

Article  XVIII  of  the  Covenant  may  well  go 
down  as  a  landmark  in  the  relations  of  states. 
Strangely  enough,  however,  it  has  been  almost  un- 
noted by  public  opinion.  It  is  one  of  those  state- 
ments which  appear  so  essentially  normal  and  nat- 
ural that  we  pass  over  it  without  consideration  of 
the  supreme  importance  attaching  to  its  every 
word.  Article  XVIII  reads : 

"  Every  Treaty  or  International  Engagement 
entered  into  hereafter  by  any  member  of  the 
League  shall  be  forthwith  registered  with  the 
Secretariat  and  shall  as  soon  as  possible  be  pub- 
lished by  it.  No  such  Treaty  or  International 


190       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Engagement  shall  be  binding  until  so  registered." 
No  Treaty  shall  be  binding  until  registered  with 
the  Secretariat  of  the  League  —  consider  what 
that  means.  It  means  in  brief  that,  if  lived  up  to, 
there  can  no  longer  be  secret  agreements  between 
nations;  that  the  obligations  of  one  nation  to 
another  must  be  known  to  all  nations;  that  secret 
alliances  and  all  the  mystery  and  the  vicious  circle 
of  redoubled  fear  that  such  alliances  bring  in  their 
train,  are  ended;  that  the  nations  stand  before 
each  other  honestly  and  frankly,  as  they  never  in 
the  past  have  stood  before  each  other.  It  means 
the  beginning  of  open  diplomacy. 

Consider  what  this  provision  would  have  done 
in  the  decade  before  the  war.  If  it  had  been  in 
force,  it  would  have  put  an  end  to  all  Germany's 
manoeuvering  based  upon  her  charge  that  the 
Entente  Powers  were  working  on  a  policy  of  en- 
circlement; it  would  have  exactly  squared  the  re- 
lations of  each  of  those  nations  and  groups  of 
nations  to  each  other;  and,  what  is  perhaps  more 
vital  still,  it  might  have  given  Germany  the  flat 
assurance  that  Great  Britain  would  immediately 
go  to  France's  aid  in  case  of  aggression  by  Ger- 


Open  Diplomacy  191 

many.  It  is  very  probable  that  if  Germany  had 
had  that  certainty  before  her  she  would  not  have 
plunged  the  world  into  blood  as  she  did. 

Those  entrusted  with  the  organization  of  the 
League  are  fully  aware  of  the  potentialities  of 
Article  XVIII.  Among  the  first  of  all  questions 
they  brought  it  before  the  Council  for  the  ap- 
proval of  detailed  plans  of  execution.  The  re- 
port presented  to  the  meeting  at  Rome  on  May 
14  is  in  itself  so  significant  of  the  new  spirit  that 
its  essence  may  well  be  quoted  in  full: 

"  Publicity  has  for  a  long  time  been  considered  • 
as  a  source  of  moral  strength  in  the  administra-, 
tion  of  National  Law.  It  should  equally 
strengthen  the  laws  and  engagements  which  ex- 
ist between  nations.  It  will  promote  public  con- 
trol. It  will  awaken  public  interest.  It  will 
remove  causes  for  distrust  and  conflict.  Public- 
ity alone  will  enable  the  League  of  Nations  to 
extend  a  moral  sanction  to  the  contractual  obli- 
gations of  its  members.  It  will  moreover  con- 
tribute to  the  formation  of  a  clear  and  indisputa- 
ble system  of  international  law." 

The  Council  agreed.     Authority  was  given  to 


192       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

work  out  the  necessary  details.  A  Treaty  Regis- 
tration Section  was  established  in  the  Secretariat 
with  authority  to  receive  treaties  from  all  mem- 
ber nations,  issue  Certificates  of  Registration  to 
the  contracting  states,  compile  both  a  chronologi- 
cal Register  and  a  subject  ledger  of  Treaties, 
publish  them  as  rapidly  as  received  in  the  Treaty 
Supplement  of  the  League  of  Nations  Journal, 
ivssue  an  Index,  and  supply  copies  to  states  or 
I  individuals  so  requesting. 

This  publicity  of  treaties  will  never  be  attained, 
many  people  may  say,  for  nations  will  continue 
to  make  secret  agreements  on  the  subjects  most 
vital  to  them.  Perhaps,  for  a  time,  but  for  only 
a  very  short  time  at  the  worst.  Such  action 
would  be  a  direct  violation  of  a  solemn  treaty 
obligation  and  would  require  a  degree  of  bad 
faith  on  the  part  of  at  least  two  governments 
which  only  the  most  cynical  would  expect.  It 
would  not  be  long  before  an  intelligent  world  pub- 
lic opinion,  led  by  an  ever  jealous  press,  would 
insist  that  this  obligation  be  respected  and  would 
so  threaten  those  in  power  that  no  statesman 
would  dare  to  expect  the  support  of  his  people 


Open  Diplomacy  193 

for  a  treaty  or  agreement  which  they  had  not 
known  existed. 

But  beyond  the  publication  of  Treaties,  con- 
sider all  the  other  public  activities  of  the  League. 
As  the  focal  point  of  world  activities  in  interna- 
tional justice,  mediation,  disarmament,  mandates, 
international  labor  and  health,  there  will  radiate 
forth  from  it  a  flow  of  information  without  pre- 
cedent or  comparison.  Within  a  short  time  in- 
deed it  should  become  the  greatest  center  of  inter- 
national news  in  history. 

For  we  shall  see  at  the  seat  of  the  League, 
sitting  permanently,  receiving  information  from 
all  over  the  world,  and  preparing  recommenda- 
tions, a  most  varied  array  of  separate  organiza- 
tions, the  Secretariat,  the  Permanent  Court,  the 
Labor  Office,  the  Health  Office,  the  Disarmament 
Commission,  the  Mandates  Commission,  the 
Transit  Commission  and  others.  Day  in  and  day 
out  these  bodies  will  be  at  work  aided  by  the  most 
effective  sources  of  information  ever  coordinated 
and  dealing  with  matters  of  surpassing  interna- 
tional importance. 

Periodically  also  will  come  special  world  con- 


194       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

grasses  for  public  discussion  of  the  various  prob- 
lems presented.  These  bodies,  it  must  ever  be 
remembered,  will  have  no  power  but  the  moral 
power  of  the  League,  no  strength  except  the 
strength  which  the  public  opinion  of  the  various 
nations  is  willing  to  give  to  them.  Very  obvi- 
ously they  cannot  meet  in  secret,  but  must  do 
everything  in  their  power  to  arouse  the  interest 
and  the  confidence  of  public  opinion. 

The  Assembly  will  bring  together  periodically 
and  probably  annually  three  representatives  of 
every  nation  in  the  League  to  discuss  the  widest 
possible  range  of  international  relations.  The 
International  Labor  Conference  will  bring  to- 
gether the  world's  labor  experts  once  a  year. 
The  Mandates  Commission  will  hold  a  formal 
annual  session  to  consider  the  annual  reports  of 
the  states  accepting  mandates.  Periodic  and 
probably  at  least  annual  conferences  will  be  held 
on  disarmament,  health  and  freedom  of  com- 
munications and  transit.  So  also  the  Council  of 
the  League  will  meet  as  occasion  requires,  and  at 
least  annually,  though  in  its  first  four  months  it 


Open  Diplomacy  195 

came  together  four  times.  Special  meetings  such 
as  the  International  Financial  Conference  and  the 
Commission  on  Enquiry  to  Russia  will  also  pro- 
vide news  of  world  interest. 

Never  before,  except  in  the  fevered  days  of 
the  Paris  Peace  Conference  when  everything  was 
in  a  state  of  hurly-burly,  have  there  been  such  pos- 
sibilities of  publicity  in  international  relations. 
Here  will  be  a  succession  of  meetings  of  the  most 
vital  importance,  together  with  a  series  of  per- 
manent organizations  gathering  and  digesting  the 
important  matters  of  world  interest.  That  al- 
ready many  journalists  have  desired  to  be  as- 
signed permanently  to  the  seat  of  the  League  is 
perhaps  the  best  indication  of  expert  judgment  in 
this  matter. 

How  the  publicity  of  these  meetings  will  be 
handled  is  already  a  matter  of  record.  The 
Council  has  held  a  series  of  important  sessions 
and  the  International  Labor  Conference  has  held 
its  first  general  assembly.  From  the  two  we 
may  gather  a  fair  index  of  the  future,  for  it  is 
a  pretty  well  established  rule  in  journalism  that 


196       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

a  door  once  opened  to  the  press  is  very  seldom 

shut. 

I 

The  International  Labor  Conference  was  held 
almost  on  the  open  street.  In  the  thirty  days  of 
its  sessions  twenty-five  public  meetings  took  place. 
Casual  sightseers  to  the  Pan-American  Building 
dropped  in  for  a  few  moments  to  the  big  hall 
where  the  labor  experts  of  forty  world  states 
were  busily,  and  at  times  heatedly,  ironing  out 
their  differences.  Every  day,  fifteen  minutes  or 
half  an  hour  after  the  session,  full  stenographic 
reports  were  distributed  to  the  press  for  reference, 
and  the  next  morning  the  delegates  and  others 
interested  found  the  Official  Bulletin  of  the  Con- 
ference on  their  breakfast  table. 

Of  course,  there  was  also  a  large  amount  of 
committee  work.  That  is  essential  in  a  meeting 
bringing  together  men  from  the  four  corners  of 
the  globe,  for  at  least  a  groundwork  of  discus- 
sion must  be  laid.  The  results  of  these  meetings, 
however,  were  registered  almost  immediately  in 
the  full  assembly,  and  any  divergence  of  view- 
point which  could  not  be  harmonized  in  the  com- 
mittee meetings  was  sure  to  crop  up  in  the  wider 


Open  Diplomacy  197 

discussion,  because  each  element  of  the  Confer- 
ence took  particular  pains  to  put  itself  on  record. 
It  is  doubtful  if  the  conflicting  requirements  of 
full  publicity  and  of  rapid  dispatch  of  business 
could  have  been  better  harmonized. 

Now  take  the  Council  meetings.  This,  of 
course,  is  quite  a  different  body  from  the  Labor 
Conference.  Its  purpose  is  to  bring  the  nine 
most  influential  world  states  together  about  a 
common  table,  in  short  order,  if  necessary,  to  con- 
sult regarding  any  emergency  that  may  arise  in  in- 
ternational relations  and  to  examine  proposals  to 
be  made  to  the  Assembly.  Theoretically  its  de- 
cisions are  mostly  preliminary  recommendations 
and  might  be  claimed,  therefore,  to  have  some  of 
the  elements  of  privacy. 

The  Council  has  not,  however,  gone  on  that 
assumption.  All  of  its  gatherings  have  been  ac 
companied  by  open  sessions  with  full  stenographic 
report.  The  procedure  has  been  somewhat  as 
follows:  the  Secretariat  has  prepared  the  data  to 
be  discussed;  that  data  have  been  sent  about  to  the 
various  Council  members  with  the  call  for  the 
meeting;  the  various  subjects  have  been  divided 


198       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

at  public  opening  session  among  the  different 
members  of  the  Council;  each  member  has  re- 
ported informally  on  his  subjects  to  an  executive 
meeting  of  the  Council;  and  shortly  thereafter 
the  whole  matter  has  been  discussed  in  full  in  a 
session  open  to  the  press. 

The  result  has  been  that  the  Council  has  done 
its  work  quickly  and  yet  openly.  There  will  be 
cynics  who  will  object  to  a  preliminary  private 
session  as  merely  a  cloak  and  who  will  say  that  the 
subsequent  open  session  is  pure  window-dressing. 
It  is  difficult,  however,  to  see  how  a  better  scheme 
could  be  evolved.  There  will  inevitably  be  some 
misunderstanding  and  some  confusion  when  a  sub- 
ject is  first  broached  which  can  be  best  cleared  up 
in  a  quick  informal  business  meeting.  The  main 
necessity  is  to  see  that  whatever  decision  is  taken 
is  taken  publicly. 

That  necessity  has  been  met.  The  Council  has 
agreed  that  no  decision  shall  be  considered  as 
made  unless  it  is  made  publicly.  In  other  words, 
if  the  Council  decides  to  submit  any  recommenda- 
tion to  the  members  of  the  League,  the  public 
will  be  informed  formally  and  officially.  It  will 


Open  Diplomacy  199 

not  be  forced  to  depend  on  guesses,  deductions 
and  back-stairs  gossip,  nor  will  it  be  required  to 
wait  an  interminable  time  until  the  matter  can  be 
gone  through  with  formally.  It  will  get  the 
news,  get  it  right,  and  get  it  while  it  is  still  news. 
That  is  a  very  big  advance  over  any  preceding  ar- 
rangements. 

Here  again,  as  in  other  phases  of  League  work, 
a  certain  amount  of  organization  has  been  needed 
to  assure  the  execution  of  these  varied  publicity 
requirements.  Most  interesting  is  the  Official 
Journal  of  the  League,  the  first  number  of  which 
appeared  in  February,  1920,  a  few  weeks  after 
the  official  birth  of  the  League.  The  Journal  is 
a  purely  official  document  devoid  of  editorial  or 
controversial  matter,  in  short,  of  propaganda. 
The  first  issue,  for  instance,  contained  the  final 
copy  of  the  Covenant  as  a  matter  of  reference, 
the  stenographic  report  of  the  first  meeting  of  the 
Council,  the  official  notices  of  adhesion  to  the 
League  of  five  of  the  thirteen  neutral  states  in- 
vited to  join,  and  a  short  summary  of  the  first 
International  Labor  Conference. 

The  Journal  is  not  exciting.     It  is  not  in  any 


2OO      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

sense  romantic.  It  is  made  up  of  cold,  official, 
documentary  material,  free  from  propaganda 
and  invaluable  as  a  matter  of  reference  to  all 
editors,  publicists  and  others  interested  in  the 
growth  of  international  cooperation.  By  itself 
it  will  form  the  official  record  of  the  League,  col- 
orless perhaps  but  accurate.  It  should  have  the 
most  unique  circulation  of  any  periodical  in  the 
world. 

t  Finally,  and  most  essential  of  all,  there  must  be 
sured  some  method  of  easy,  rapid  and  inexpen- 
/e  press  communication.  If  the  League  cannot 
exist  without  the  support  of  public  opinion,  it 
must  afford  every  possible  facility  to  newspapers 
and  magazines  to  maintain  correspondents  at  the 
seat  of  the  League  and  to  enable  them  to  cable 
or  wireless  full  details  of  what  the  League  is 
doing.  Nothing  would  be  more  disastrous  than 
a  general  public  impression  that  the  League  was 
doing  nothing. 

Enthusiasts  on  communications  have  claimed 
that  a  press  rate  of  five  cents  a  word  from  the 
seat  of  the  League  to  the  United  States  would 
assure  success  to  the  League  in  this  country. 


Open  Diplomacy  201 

This  would  be  due,  not  to  any  propaganda  or  any 
interference  with  the  untrammeled  filing  of  dis- 
patches by  the  individual  correspondents,  but  to 
the  fact  that  once  the  public  familiarizes  itself 
with  the  League,  understands  its  workings,  and 
feels  a  direct  relationship  to  its  success,  it  will  put 
all  its  strength  behind  it  and  force  it  to  makt 
good. 

The  Peace  Treaty  failed  in  the  United  States, 
it  is  often  alleged,  because  of  lack  of  publicity  at 
the  Peace  Conference.  No  one  would  make  the 
claim  that  there  was  even  an  approach  to  public 
diplomacy  at  Paris,  but  similarly,  few  who  are 
familiar  with  the  details  will  deny  that  the  exj 
pense  of  cable  tolls  from  Paris  to  the  States,  runj 
ning  from  fifteen  cents  to  seventy-five  cents 
word,  made  it  almost  impossible  to  carry  over  th 
full,  interpretative,  steady  reports  which  all  cor 
respondents  desired  to  send.  The  cost  was  pro 
hibitive,  and  as  a  result  the  American  public  se- 
cured at  best  only  a  secondhand  idea  of  what  was 
common  knowledge  in  Paris. 

Consequently,   plans   are   already  on   foot   for  \ 
the  provision  of  full  wireless  facilities  at  the  seat ' 


2O2       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

of  the  League,  in  order  that  a  low  press  rate  may 
be  possible.  It  will  take  nearly  a  year  and  a  half 
and  cost  around  a  million  dollars  to  put  up  the 
right  kind  of  towers,  but  there  is  not  the  slightest 
doubt  but  that  the  system  would  more  than  pay  for 
itself  in  a  very  short  space  of  time.  The  result 
would  be  that  the  world  would  know  itself  as  it 
has  never  been  able  to  know  itself  before. 

Here  at  this  point,  fittingly  enough  in  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  relations  of  the  League  and  the 
public,  we  come  to  the  end  of  this  little  book. 
Beside  that  question  all  others  are  dwarfed. 
Alone  it  offers  the  key  to  success  or  failure  of  the 
League.  For,  it  must  be  stated  once  again,  the 
League  has  no  strength  except  the  strength  which 
the  interest,  support  and  confidence  of  the  public 
give  it. 

It  is  the  author's  hope  that  these  short  chap- 
ters have  helped  to  outline  the  League  structure 
and  method  of  operation.  That  is  a  big  task  for 
a  little  book,  but  it  is  not  the  biggest.  For  unless 
the  reader  carries  away  the  overwhelming  con- 
viction that  the  success  of  the  League  can  come 
only  from  the  interest  of  himself  and  his  friends 


Open  Diplomacy  203 

and  neighbors  all  over  the  world,  the  big  mission 
which  lies  open  before  these  pages  will  remain 
unfulfilled.  The  League  must  be  watched, 
studied,  criticised,  driven  forward,  and  above  all 
held  true  to  its  ideals  by  the  men  and  women  of 
the  world  in  whose  interest  it  has  been  called 
into  being. 

The  future  of  the  League   of  Nations   rests 
with  the  public  opinion  of  the  world. 


THE  LEAGUE  AS  MEDIATOR 

THE  League  of  Nations  was  not  six  months  old 
before  two  cases  involving  a  threat  of  war  were 
brought  to  its  mediation.  Thus,  even  before  the 
League  had  had  chance  to  organise,  the  procedure 
laid  down  with  such  care  in  the  Covenant  was 
called  upon  to  function.  The  two  cases,  inter- 
estingly enough,  brought  into  play  nearly  every 
course  of  action  open  to  the  League  and  illumi- 
nated very  sharply  the  various  steps  which  may  be 
taken  by  it  in  the  effort  to  prevent  war. 

The  first  case  was  an  appeal  of  Persia,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  League,  against  the  wanton  aggression 
of  another  state,  Soviet  Russia,  while  the  second 
case  was  brought  before  the  League  by  Great 
Britain,  a  disinterested  party,  in  an  effort  to  pre- 
Went  the  Aaland  Islands  dispute  from  generating 
war  between  Sweden  and  Finland.  Regardless  of 
either  the  importance  or  the  outcome  of  these  two 
particular  cases,  the  great  fact  stands  out  that 
means  of  initiating  an  international  conference  and 

204 


The  League  as  Mediator  205 

of  taking  steps  looking  towards  the  preservation 
of  justice  were  available  which  had  not  hitherto 
been  at  hand.  It  is,  consequently,  very  interesting 
to  analyse  the  two  cases  as  precedents  for  similar 
future  cases. 

Let  us  take  the  Persian  case  first  as  the  first  to 
arise.  On  March  iQth,  Prince  Firouz,  Persian 
Foreign  Minister,  who  at  the  moment  was  in  Paris, 
notified  the  League  that  on  the  day  before  the 
Bolsheviks  had  bombarded  Enzeli  in  Northern 
Persia,  landed  troops  and  taken  possession  of  the 
city.  He  pointed  out  that  this  was  in  defiance  of 
the  Covenant  and  requested  that  a  meeting  of  the 
Council  be  summoned  in  accordance  with  Article 
XI,  to  the  effect  that : 

"'  It  is  also  declared  to  be  the  friendly  right  of 
each  member  of  the  League  to  bring  to  the  atten- 
tion of  the  Assembly  or  of  the  Council  any  cir- 
cumstances whatever  affecting  international  rela- 
tions, which  threaten  to  disturb  international  peace 
or  the  good  understanding  between  nations  upon 
which  peace  depends.'* 

The  facts  were  absolutely  plain  and  the  conclu- 
sions incontrovertible.  Consequently,  the  Secre- 
tary-General, acting  within  the  authority  of  Article 


206      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

XI  that  "  in  case  any  such  emergency  should  arise 
the  Secretary-General  shall  on  the  request  of  any 
member  of  the  League  forthwith  summon  a  meet- 
ing of  the  Council,"  called  the  Council  together  at 
London  on  April  1/j.th.  On  that  date  representa- 
tives of  the  world's  nine  most  powerful  nations 
met  to  see  what,  if  anything,  could  be  done  in  the 
face  of  this  wanton  aggression. 

Prince  Firouz  was  at  once  admitted  as  a  mem- 
er  of  the   Council   as  provided  in  Article   IV, 
which  reads: 

"  Any  Member  of  the  League  not  represented 
n  the  Council  shall  be  invited  to  send  a  Repre- 
sentative to  sit  as  a  Member  at  any  meeting  of 
the  Council  during  the  consideration  of  matters 
specially  affecting  the  interests  of  that  Member  of 
the  League." 

He  thereupon  laid  before  the  Council  a  com- 
plete series  of  documents  showing  exactly  what 
Jhad  taken  place  at  Enzeli  and  giving  the  Council 
full  information  on  which  to  base  its  conclusions. 
;  During  the  sessions,  however,  a  note  was  received 
from  tl^Bolsheviks  themselves  to  the  effect  that 

they  would  immediately  withdraw  from  the  city 
I 


The  League  as  Mediator  207 

and  cease  their  hostile  operations.  This,  of 
course,  changed  the  whole  face  of  the  situation 
and  made  it  unnecessary  for  the  Council  to  do 
aught  but  note  the  facts  and  issue  a  statement  ap- 
proving the  action  of  Persia  in  directing  atten- 
tion to  the  case  and  assuring  her  that  the  Council 
would  follow  the  compliance  of  the  Bolsheviks 
with  their  agreement  with  much  interest. 

If  in  this  particular  case  it  so  happened  that 
the  League  was  not  required  to  take  decisive  ac- 
tion, the  precedent  which  it  established  was  never- 
theless of  vast  importance.  For  the  first  time  a 
nation  which  had  been  attacked  in  defiance  of  all 
rules  of  international  law  had  been  able  to  appeal 
to  the  other  nations  of  the  world,  had  seen  the 
most  important  nations  meet  almost  immediately 
to  consider  the  case,  and  had  had  the  assurance 
that  the  rest  of  the  world  stood  behind  her  in  the 
protection  of  her  rights  and  sovereignty. 

Never  before  had  such  a  thing  been  possible. 
Nations  might  have  appealed  to  other  nations  for 
help,  but  there  existed  no  machinery  by  which  the 
other  nations  could  come  together  quickly  and 
automatically  to  examine  the  question  and  see 


208      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

what  could  be  done.  In  all  previous  experience, 
stolidity,  slowness  and  extreme  disassociation  of 
action  have  characterized  international  action. 
Today,  however,  the  very  fact  that  a  conference 
can  automatically  be  called  to  consider  any  acts 
of  aggression  will  by  itself  alone  have  a  most  de- 
terrent effect  on  nations  inclined  to  such  piracy. 

What,  for  instance,  would  this  machinery  have 
meant  in  1914?  If  it  had  existed,  Germany 
would  have  known  that  the  moment  she  crossed 
the  Belgian  frontier,  Belgium,  or  indeed  any  other 
state  in  the  League,  could  have  called  a  meeting 
of  the  Council  to  see  what  action  was  requisite 
and  possible.  Immediately,  then,  all  world  na- 
tions would  have  examined  the  question  about  a 
common  table  and  it  would  have  been  possible  to 
agree  upon  a  joint  plan  to  restrain  the  wrongdoer. 
This  plan,  of  course,  would  have  had  no  binding 
effect  on  any  nation  involved,  but  would  have  been 
submitted  to  each  one  for  acceptance  or  rejection 
as  the  viewpoint  of  a  meeting  of  world  states- 
men. 

The  second  case,  that  of  the  Aaland  Islands, 
was  of  decidedly  more  interest  and  importance. 


The  League  as  Mediator  209 

The  Aalands,  it  may  be  said  by  way  of  preface, 
form  a  small  archipelago  contiguous  to  the  shores 
of  Finland.     A  part  of  Russia  until  the  break-up  \ 
of  the  old  Empire,  they  were  claimed  by  Finland 
on  the  grounds  of  inheritance  and  of  contiguity/ 
and  by  Sweden  on  the  grounds  of  self-determina-/ 
tion.     The  contest  between  the  two  States  had  be- 
come so  bitter  that  Sweden  had  temporarily  with- 
drawn her  minister   from  Helsingfors   and  war 
had  been  freely  predicted. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  League  of  Nations 
began  to  function.  Great  Britain,  a  third  party 
with  no  interest  in  the  dispute  except  as  it  in- 
volved the  general  preservation  of  peace,  referred 
the  matter  on  June  iQth  to  the  Council  of  the 
League  of  Nations  under  Article  XI  of  the  Cove- 
nant, which  gives  to  each  member  of  the  League 
the  right  to  request  League  action  in  any  case 
threatening  war. 

Automatically,  therefore,  a  process  looking  to- 
ward a  peaceful  solution  was  set  in  motion.  This 
process  would  have  been  impossible  under  the  pre- 
war system  of  international  disorganisation  before 
the  creation  of  the  League  machinery.  By  means 


2io      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

of  it  a  disinterested  State  was  enabled  as  a  matter 
of  right  and  without  assuming  an  unfriendly  atti- 
tude towards  either  contestant,  to  bring  the  ques- 
tion immediately  before  an  existing  world  organ- 
isation. 

The  facts  of  the  case  were  sent  immediately  to 
all  States  in  the  League ;  the  Members  of  the  Coun- 
cil were  called  together;  and  Sweden  and  Fin- 
land were  invited  to  submit  statements.  The  at- 
tention of  the  world  thus  became  focussed  upon 
the  dispute,  and  the  task  of  evolving  a  peaceful 
settlement  became  a  matter  of  immediate  inter- 
national interest.  It  was  exactly  this  step  which 
was  lacking  in  late  July  and  August,  1914,  when 
Sir  Edward  Grey  made  every  effort  to  bring  the 
nations  together  about  a  common  conference  table. 

The  Council  assembled  in  London  on  July  9th. 
The  first  question  before  it  was  the  status  of 
Sweden  and  Finland  in  the  deliberations.  Swe- 
den was  not  a  Member  of  the  Council,  while  Fin- 
land was  not  even  a  Member  of  the  League.  It 
was  obvious,  however,  that  both  should  partici- 
pate in  the  discussions  in  order  that  the  decisions 


The  League  as  Mediator  211 

might  be  arrived  at  voluntarily  and  by  agreement 
of  all. 

Sweden  was  immediately  admitted  as  a  Mem- 
ber of  the  Council  under  Article  IV  of  the  Cove- 
nant. 

Finland's  position  was  more  difficult,  however, 
as,  though  that  country  has  applied  for  member- 
ship in  the  League,  she  cannot  be  formally  ad- 
mitted until  the  first  Assembly.  Nevertheless  it 
was  agreed  by  all  Members  of  the  Council,  includ- 
ing the  representative  of  Sweden,  that  Finland 
should  be  accorded  full  rights  of  membership. 

Thereupon  both  nations  presented  their  cases, 
first  by  written  statements  and  later  by  verbal 
explanations.  The  arguments  need  not  be  dis- 
cussed in  detail,  for  they  are  wholly  overshadowed 
by  the  fact  that  an  international  organisation  ex- 
isted where  such  arguments  could  be  presented  and 
weighed  at  all.  Both  nations,  in  short,  placed 
their  cases  before  what  might  be  called  the  bar  of 
international  judgment  and  were  given  the  op- 
portunity of  learning  the  opinion  of  the  disin- 
terested outside  world. 


212       The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

Vastly  more  than  this,  however,  lay  behind  the 
neeting,  because  Sweden  as  a  member  of  the 
.eague  and  Finland  as  a  State,  having  accepted 
he  obligations  of  the  League  in  this  dispute,  had 
3ound  themselves  not  to  go  to  war  until  after  the 
iward  of  the  Council,  and  even  then  not  until 
ifter  three  months  had  elapsed.  This,  of  course, 
ivould  so  postpone  war  as  to  give  the  agencies  of 
Deace  and  of  world  public  opinion  the  fullest  op- 
portunity to  act. 

The  interior  workings  of  the  Council  were  most 
advantageously  illustrated  in  this  particular  dis- 
pute. Finland  immediately  claimed  that  the  dis- 
pute was  a  wholly  domestic  one  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  League  of  Nations.  She  cited  Article  XV 
to  the  effect  that — "  If  the  dispute  between  the 
parties  is  claimed  by  one  of  them,  and  is  found 
by  the  Council  to  arise  out  of  a  matter  which  by 
international  law  is  solely  within  the  domestic 
jurisdiction  of  that  party  the  Council  shall  so  re- 
port, and  shall  make  no  recommendation  as  to  its 
settlement." 

This  claim  raised  a  direct  question  of  law. 
The  first  step,  then,  was  not  the  bringing  about  of 


The  League  as  Mediator  213 

a  rapprochement  between  the  two  parties  but 
rather  the  interpretation  of  various  legal  docu- 
ments. Obviously  that  phase  of  the  question 
could  be  far  better  handled  in  a  Court  of  Law 
than  in  a  Council  of  diplomatic  representatives. 

Exactly  this  contingency  is  foreseen  in  Article 
XIV,  which  says  that  the  Permanent  Court  of  In- 
ternational Justice  may  "  give  an  advisory  opinion 
upon  any  question  or  dispute  referred  to  it  by  the 
Council  or  by  the  Assembly."  In  other  words, 
special  care  has  been  taken  to  allow  the  diplo- 
matic branch  of  the  League  of  Nations  to  sep- 
arate disputes  into  their  component  parts,  in  or- 
der that  purely  legal  questions  may  be  entrusted 
to  a  purely  legal  body.  This  is  a  great  stride  in 
advance  of  anything  that  has  hitherto  been  pos- 
sible and  very  largely  affects  the  charge  that  Coun- 
cil decisions  will  be  based  on  purely  political  con- 
siderations. 

As  the  Permanent  Court  was  at  the  moment  in 
the  process  of  formation,  it  was  necessary  in  this 
particular  case  to  refer  the  legal  question  to  a 
special  Committee  of  three  jurists.  In  an  effort 
to  procure  men  wholly  impartial  and  at  the  same 


214      The  League  of  Nations  at  Work 

time  a  predominance  of  men  from  the  small  Pow- 
ers the  following  men  were  chosen:  Professor 
Larnaude  of  the  University  of  Paris  and  Mon- 
sieur Mercier  of  Switzerland  and  a.  representa- 
tive from  Holland.  Of  course,  this  reference 
to  a  Committee  of  Jurists  involved  delay  in 
the  decision,  but  was  felt  to  be  justified  on  the 
principle  that  it  is  far  better  to  take  the  time 
necessary  to  arrive  at  a  decision,  the  justice  of 
which  cannot  be  disputed,  than  to  hurry  to  a  hasty, 
ill-formed  conclusion  which  would  discredit  belief 
in  the  League's  impartiality.  Every  effort  was 
made  to  have  world  public  opinion,  and  specially 
that  in  Finland  and  Sweden,  accept  the  decision  as 
eminently  wise  and  just. 

Meanwhile  the  situation  naturally  remained 
delicate.  At  the  meeting  on  July  I2th,  Mr.  Bal- 
four  as  President  of  the  Council  asked  both  the 
Swedish  and  Finnish  representatives  to  give  pub- 
lic assurance  that  they  would  take  every  precau- 
tion not  to  aggravate  it.  Both  these  men,  stand- 
ing before  the  Council  and  the  public,  acceded  to 
this  request.  Thus  for  the  first  time,  two  nations 
have  made  a  public  agreement  to  take  no  action 


The  League  as  Mediator  215 

to  advance  their  own  material  interests  during 
the  time  necessary  for  the  other  disinterested  na- 
tions of  the  world  to  seek  to  work  out  for  them 
a  just  and  peaceful  solution. 

Immediately  afterwards,  the  Finnish  Foreign 
Office  telegraphed  the  League  that  "  The  High 
Court  has  released  Sundblon  and  Bjorkman,"  the 
two  Aaland  Island  leaders  who  had  been  im- 
prisoned by  Finland  for  secession. 


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